Guido Calabresi

Guido Calabresi (born October 18, 1932) is an Italian-born American legal scholar who serves as a Senior circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. He is a former Dean of Yale Law School, where he has been a professor since 1959. Calabresi is considered, along with Ronald Coase and Richard Posner, a founder of the field of law and economics. Early life and education Calabresi is the son of the late cardiologist Massimo Calabresi and European literature scholar Bianca Maria Finzi-Contini Calabresi (1902–1982). Calabresi's parents, active in the resistance against Italian fascism, eventually fled Milan for New Haven, Connecticut, immigrating to the United States in September 1939. The family became naturalized American citizens in 1948. Guido's older brother Paul Calabresi (1930–2003) was a prominent medical and pharmacological researcher of cancer and oncology. Calabresi's mother descends from an Italian-Jewish family. He describes himself as a "practicing Catholic" who believes in God. Calabresi received his Bachelor of Science, summa cum laude, from Yale College in 1953, having majored in economics. He was then selected as a Rhodes Scholar, studying at Magdalen College, Oxford, which awarded him a Bachelor of Arts degree with First Class Honors in 1955. This was later promoted by seniority to a Master of Arts in 1959. He received his Bachelor of Laws (LL.B.), magna cum laude, from Yale Law School in 1958, graduating first in his class, and was also a law review member as Note Editor of the Yale Law Journal from 1957 to 1958. Following graduation from Yale Law, Calabresi served as a law clerk for United States Supreme Court Associate Justice Hugo Black from 1958 to 1959. Additionally, he is a member of Phi Beta Kappa and the Order of the Coif. Legal career Calabresi had been offered a full professorship at the University of Chicago Law School in 1960. However, he joined the faculty of the Yale Law School upon completion of his Supreme Court clerkship, becoming the youngest ever full professor at Yale Law, and was Dean from 1985 to 1994. He now is Sterling Professor Emeritus of Law and Professorial Lecturer in Law at Yale.