Richard Posner

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Richard Posner

Age: 74

Occupation: Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals, 7th Circuit

Posner not only decides the most important issues of the day (he overturned Illinois’s ban on concealed weapons in December) but also influences intellectuals nationwide (in The New Republic, he skewered Justice Antonin Scalia’s recent book on the Constitution).

Photograph: ABEL URIBE/CHICAGO TRIBUNE