Guido Calabresi

Legal

Birthday October 18, 1932

Birth Sign Libra

Birthplace Milan, Italy

Age 91 years old

Nationality Italy

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1903

His father, Massimo Calabresi (1903–1988), was a cardiologist, and his mother, Bianca Maria Finzi-Contini Calabresi (1902–1982), was a scholar of European literature.

1930

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.

1932

Guido Calabresi (born October 18, 1932) is an Italian-born American jurist who serves as a senior circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

Calabresi was born in 1932 in Milan, Italy.

1939

Calabresi's parents were active in the resistance against Italian fascism and eventually fled Italy, immigrating to the United States in 1939.

1946

Both received their primary education at the Foote School in New Haven, graduating in 1946 and 1948, respectively.

1948

The family settled in New Haven, Connecticut, and became naturalized American citizens in 1948.

1949

Calabresi would continue on to receive his secondary education from Hopkins School, graduating in 1949.

They reside in Woodbridge, Connecticut, and have three children.

1953

Calabresi graduated from Yale College in 1953 with a Bachelor of Science, summa cum laude, in economics.

1955

He was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship and spent two years at Magdalen College, Oxford, receiving a Bachelor of Arts degree with first-class honours in 1955 (later promoted per tradition to Master of Arts).

He then attended Yale Law School, where he was a notes editor for the Yale Law Journal.

1958

He graduated in 1958 ranked first in his class with a Bachelor of Laws, magna cum laude.

Following graduation from law school, Calabresi served as a law clerk for United States Supreme Court Associate Justice Hugo Black from 1958 to 1959.

1959

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.

1960

Calabresi had been offered a full professorship at the University of Chicago Law School in 1960.

1971

Calabresi is a member of the Connecticut Bar Association and from 1971 to 1975 served as town selectman for Woodbridge, Connecticut.

Calabresi is, along with Ronald Coase, a founder of law and economics.

His pioneering contributions to the field include the application of economic reasoning to tort law, and a legal interpretation of the Coase theorem.

Under Calabresi's intellectual and administrative leadership, Yale Law School became a leading center for legal scholarship imbued with economics and other social sciences.

Calabresi has been awarded more than forty honorary degrees from universities across the world.

He is a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

1973

President Clinton is a 1973 graduate of the Yale Law School, although he never had Calabresi as a professor.

Among Calabresi's group of former students are Supreme Court Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Sonia Sotomayor, former United States Attorney General Michael Mukasey, feminist legal scholar and law professor at the Universities of Michigan and Chicago Catharine MacKinnon, former White House Counsel Gregory Craig, legal scholar Philip Bobbitt, Senator John Danforth, Harvard Law School professor Richard H. Fallon Jr., civil and human rights legal scholar Kenji Yoshino, torts scholar and law professor at the University of Virginia Kenneth Abraham, feminist international attorney Ann Olivarius, and New York University School of Law torts professor Catherine Sharkey.

Calabresi, alone among Yale Law School faculty members, supported Thomas's nomination to the Supreme Court.

1985

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.

In 1985, he was awarded the Laetare Medal by the University of Notre Dame, the oldest and most prestigious award for American Catholics.

1994

On February 9, 1994, President Bill Clinton nominated Calabresi as a United States Circuit Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit vacated by Judge Thomas Joseph Meskill.

He was confirmed by the United States Senate on July 18, 1994.

He received his commission on July 21, 1994 and entered duty on September 16, 1994.

2006

Yale, in 2006, created the Guido Calabresi Professorship of Law, with Kenji Yoshino serving as the inaugural professor of the endowed chair.

Daniel Markovits is the current holder of the chair.

Calabresi is an Honorary Editor of the University of Bologna Law Review, a general student-edited law journal published by the Department of Legal Studies of the University of Bologna.

Calabresi is the author of four books and over 100 articles on law and related subjects.

Calabresi married Anne Gordon Audubon Tyler, a social anthropologist, freelance writer, social activist, philanthropist and arts patron.

2009

Calabresi assumed senior status on July 21, 2009.