Richard A. Epstein is a Manhattan Institute visiting scholar. He is one of the nation's most prolific legal thinkers, with writings spanning a broad array of fields, including common law subjects of property, contracts and torts. Professor Epstein's influence is profound: he is one of the three most cited law professors in the United States and the most cited professor writing largely in private law.

Since 1977, Professor Epstein has edited one of the leading torts case books, for which he has just prepared a ninth edition, out next year. His first authored book on tort law, Modern Products Liability Law (Greenwood Press, 1980), prefigured and helped shape the Manhattan Institute's work in reforming America's litigation system. He later published books looking at other burgeoning fields of excessive litigation, employment discrimination law (Forbidden Grounds: The Case Against Employment Discrimination Laws (Harvard)) and the overuse of complex consent decrees in antitrust cases (Antitrust Decrees in Theory and Practice: Why Less is More (AEI)).

Perhaps Professor Epstein's most seminal book is Takings: Private Property and the Power of Eminent Domain (Harvard, 1985), which presents a case for sharply rejecting the New Deal state with its expansive powers of taxation and regulation at both the federal and state level. In addition, Epstein has written extensively on American health care, most recently in Overdose: How Excessive Government Regulation Stifles Pharmaceutical Innovation (Yale, 2006). Professor Epstein also regularly writes columns in popular publications including The Wall Street Journal and Financial Times Online.

Professor Epstein is a visiting professor at NYU Law School. He is the James Parker Hall Distinguished Service Professor of Law at the University of Chicago, where he has taught since 1972, and the Peter and Kirstin Bedford Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. He has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 1985, and 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. He has served as a Senior Fellow of the MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics at the University of Chicago Medical School, since 1983.

Professor Epstein holds undergraduate degrees from Columbia College and Oxford University, a law degree from Yale, and a doctorate of law from the University of Ghent.

Articles/Op-eds

• Is the Bonus Tax Unconstitutional?, Wall Street Journal, 03-26-09
• Mandatory Labor Arbitration, Washington Times, 03-24-09
• A Labor Dilemma For President Bam, New York Post, 10-21-08