ABSTRACT
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. has proven to be the most prescient of commentators. In 1897, he could already predict that Richard Posner would be the man of the future, for the rational study of the law, the black-letter man may be the man of the present, but the man of the future is the man of statistics and the master of economics. Posner has assumed many varied personae in his professional career, he has remained most closely associated with the law-and-economics approach; he was its most uncompromising practitioner and proselytizer, if not its founding figure. Posner's continuing fondness for law-and-economics has much to do with his commitment to the appeal of a more scientific method of studying law and related phenomena. For better and worse, a Chicago-style economic analysis has been accepted as a standard tool for engaging in both descriptive and prescriptive study of legal rules and institutions.
