Books, Federal Judges, Richard Posner

Judge Richard Posner: An Interview With His Biographer, William Domnarski

Judicial biography isn't typical summer fare, but this book is a must-read for fans of Judge Posner.

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Richard Posner by William DomnarskiIf you’re looking for some good reading in these final days of summer, maybe something to tackle over the long Labor Day weekend, I have a recommendation for you. It’s not your typical beach read — it’s a judicial biography, not a fun, gossipy novel — but it’s well worth your time.

We are huge fans of Judge Richard Posner here at Above the Law — and we know you are as well, based on the large readership that posts about “The Poze” invariably generate. And now we can all enjoy the first full-length biography of the man, the myth, the legend.

As I state in my back-cover blurb for lawyer and author William Domnarski’s Richard Posner, “This comprehensive intellectual history represents the definitive word on one of the legal profession’s most brilliant minds and fascinating figures.” To get a sense of the types of tasty tidbits to be found in the biography, check out Jacob Gershman’s WSJ Law Blog post.

I recently connected with Bill Domnarski to talk about his new book. Here’s a (lightly edited and condensed) write-up of our conversation.

DL: Judge Posner — or Dick, as he insists his law clerks call him, as you note in the book — is a towering figure within the law. It’s surprising that he hasn’t been the subject of a full-length biography until now. What was the genesis of this project?

WD: It’s hard to know why Posner had not been put under the biographical microscope prior to my book. His career-long denunciations of the legal academy might explain why law professors stayed away. Others might have passed because there was simply so much to read. And I suspect there’s a parallel someplace to supermodels not getting asked out because men assume they’ll be turned down.

I had read David Dorsen’s otherwise fine 2012 biography of Henry Friendly and wished he had had more of a chance to talk to people Friendly had known when he was younger. But because Friendly had been gone nearly thirty years by the time of the biography, most of the opportunities for such interviews had long passed, to use a good phrase. I wrote to Posner and said that I wanted to write his biography if no one else was doing it.

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It was, it turned out, an open field. He offered personal cooperation and access to his archive at the University of Chicago. I had known him for some 25 years, but I don’t think that had much to do with his willingness to cooperate. The cooperation mattered, not just in the time I spent with him, including time going through boxes of childhood memorabilia, but in getting people he had known from as far back as grade school to talk with me.

DL: And the extensive research you conducted shines forth in the book. I loved the stories about his childhood, such as the time he taught a high school geometry class — while still a high-school student himself! I also appreciated how deeply you dug into original documents, like his senior thesis at Yale or his fascinating correspondence with colleagues like Martha Nussbaum. Can you talk a bit about how long this project took you and how much work you put into it?

WD: It was two and a half to three years of pretty solid work. I guess you could say that I held two jobs during that period. I continued to practice law and worked on the book in the early morning hours, in the evening, and on the weekends. I had ten or twelve hours of interviews with Posner and maybe two hundred hours of interviews with the two hundred-odd people I interviewed. I spent five or six days in the University of Chicago archive as part of my six or seven trips to Chicago.

I like to think that I read everything. I read all the opinions in the first year of work. I read most of the them for the second time, having first read them when they came out. I read some for the third time, since I had written about the first fifteen years or so for a book on judicial opinions I wrote in 1996. I read PDFs of the three thousand opinions and printed out annotated pages (some multiple times) for the forty-odd stacks of pages I assembled devoted to particular themes or phenomena. I continued to keep up with the opinions all the time I was working on the book, some one hundred per year. I read all Posner’s books (more than fifty), about ten for the second time, and all the reviews of the books. I read the more than five hundred articles by Posner and all the important articles about his books, articles, and opinions.

I didn’t start writing until all the reading was done. The first draft was some one hundred fifty thousand words and took me maybe four months to write. Posner graciously answered dozens of email questions I had as I worked through the project, especially the writing phase. He was also kind enough to read the completed manuscript for factual errors.

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DL: That’s a ton of work — but quite fitting, given your prolific subject.

Another thing that became clear to my reading your book — which of course I knew already, but you do a wonderful job of highlighting it — is how Posner is an extraordinary individual in so many ways, ranging from his intellect to his work ethic to his personality. So let me ask: are there any lessons for our lives or careers that we “ordinary people” can take from Posner’s example?

WD: Work harder and always be driven by the question of what makes the most sense. These are the two biggest lessons I learned from my time working on Posner. I also learned to ask the tough questions of judges, about whether they are working hard enough and bringing inquiry rather than ego to their work.

DL: Thank you for the wise counsel — and for producing the definitive biography of a leading legal mind!

Richard Posner [Amazon (affiliate link)]
Henry Friendly, Greatest Judge of His Era [Amazon (affiliate link)]
‘The Brain’ and ‘The Monster’: The Many Personas of Judge Richard Posner [WSJ Law Blog]

David Lat is the founder and managing editor of Above the Law and the author of Supreme Ambitions: A Novel. You can connect with David on Twitter (@DavidLat), LinkedIn, and Facebook, and you can reach him by email at dlat@abovethelaw.com.

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