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1/30/03 PROFESSOR D’AMATO ASKS: DOES JUDGE POSNER HAVE RIGHT CONCEPTION OF JUDGING?

Professor Anthony D’Amato, who is writing a book titled “Judging Posner,“ will go head to head in a debate with Richard A. Posner, the nationally known jurist who serves at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.

The debate, titled “Does Judge Posner Have the Right Conception of Judging?,” will take place at noon, Thursday, Jan. 30, at Thorne Auditorium at the School of Law, 375 E. Chicago Ave. It is free and open to the public.

D’Amato, the Judd and Mary Morris Leighton Professor of Law, has studied Posner’s books, speeches and decisions, and he will argue that Posner believes in creating new law from the bench.

Interested in the theory of law, D’Amato writes in the areas of international law and jurisprudence, focusing on their underlying analytic structure. An active litigator in international human rights, D’Amato has litigated the only court of appeals victory against the U.S. government in a Vietnam-era military service case and the only court of appeals victory against a foreign sovereign for a governmental tort committed against an American citizen. He is the attorney for a lawsuit against the United States filed on behalf of 7,000 American civilians taken prisoner when Japan’s army overran the Philippine islands in 1942.

Posner, who also is a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School, has written numerous books and articles in legal and economic journals. Since becoming a judge, his academic work has included studies in the economics of criminal law, labor law and intellectual property; in jurisprudence, law and literature and the interpretation of constitutional and statutory texts; and in the economics of sexuality and of old age.

Posner’s latest books include “The Economic Structure of Intellectual Property Law” (Harvard University Press forthcoming), “Law, Pragmatism, and Democracy” (Harvard University Press forthcoming) and “Economic Analysis of Law,” 6th ed. (Aspen Law & Business 2003).