Professor Richard Epstein, the James Parker Hall Distinguished Service Professor of Law at the University of Chicago, will join NYU School of Law as a permanent member of the faculty in Fall 2010.
Epstein, who is currently visiting the Law School for the fourth time, is considered to be one of the most influential thinkers in legal academia. He is well known for his research and writings on a broad range of constitutional, economic, historical, and philosophical subjects.
"I am honored to be able to join the NYU faculty whose collegiality and seriousness of purpose has been evident to me since I first started visiting at NYU four years ago," Epstein said.
Among his many books are Overdose: How Excessive Government Regulation Stifles Pharmaceutical Innovation (2006); How Progressives Rewrote the Constitution (2006); and Supreme Neglect: How to Revive Constitutional Protection for Private Property (2008). He has taught courses across the whole curriculum, including antitrust, communications, constitutional law, contracts, criminal law, health, labor, jurisprudence, patents, property, Roman law, and torts.
Epstein has also been the Peter and Kirstin Bedford Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution since 2000. Prior to joining the University of Chicago Law School faculty, he taught law at the University of Southern California. He served as Interim Dean at the University of Chicago from February to June 2001, and will be a Senior Lecturer after his move to NYU.
Epstein received an LL.D., h.c., from the University of Ghent, 2003. He has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 1985 and a Senior Fellow of the Center for Clinical Medical Ethics at the University of Chicago Medical School, also since 1983. He served as editor of the Journal of Legal Studies from 1981 to 1991, and of the Journal of Law and Economics from 1991 to 2001. At present he is a director of the John M. Olin Program in Law and Economics. He earned both a B.A. in Law from Oxford and an LL.B. from Yale.
"Richard has been a wonderful addition to our intellectual community in recent years, and we are so pleased that he will now join us on a permanent basis," NYU School of Law Dean Richard Revesz said.