Farewell, Randy – ProMarket

University of Chicago Law School professor Randy Picker handed away this weekend. Georgetown professor Filippo Lancieri pens a tribute to his colleague and former PhD advisor.

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This previous weekend, professor Randy Picker handed away far too quickly.

I met Randy as an incoming UChicago LLM scholar in 2015. It is inconceivable to do him justice in phrases.

First, he was a very gifted trainer. I’m nonetheless in awe of how he managed to make antitrust enjoyable and fascinating for the greater than 100 college students who lined as much as take his class—they actually had so as to add extra desks to the again of the category to shrink the waitlist. Randy would spend dozens of hours enhancing his personal course supplies so college students wouldn’t must pay for casebooks. He nonetheless makes all of those supplies, collectively along with his meticulous slides (all 1,988 of them for his fall 2025 class!), freely available online for anybody to entry and obtain. He taught many different programs—from tech coverage to copyright, secured transactions, community industries, and his MOOC on internet giants—and it was at all times enjoyable and enlightening to take his lessons (although I admit all I find out about secured transactions is rumour).

It can be clear from his papers and talks that he was a terrific scholar. An icon of the 2nd era of the Chicago School of antitrust, Randy actually shared the “Easterbrook premise” that the majority markets will self-correct with out intervention. That stated, he was at all times open to partaking with new concepts. When the Stigler Center was increasing its antitrust work, it ruffled its fair proportion of feathers throughout the University, particularly with the older guard. Randy, nevertheless, was the one that linked me with the Center (“You should connect and go check the very interesting discussions they are having out there”). Years later, I requested half-jokingly if he regretted that alternative, because it helped drift me away from a few of his antitrust views. He first responded that the position of any PhD supervisor is to push their college students to do good work and discover their very own voice, it doesn’t matter what it could be. He then gave a brief lecture on why a college is just as sturdy as its dedication to questioning its core concepts when confronted with new theories and information, and on what a blessing it was to spend most of our time conducting analysis and advancing information, particularly when dealing with pushback.

True to his teachings, he attended all of our antitrust conferences, and it at all times gave me pleasure each time I acquired a message on why somebody was “totally wrong” about one thing. Randy went on to chair the 2017 University Committee on Disruptive Conduct, which set boundaries on the best way to safeguard each a speaker’s proper to be heard and a protester’s proper to protest. These included the overall ideas that “debate or deliberation may not be suppressed because the ideas put forth are thought by some or even by most members of the University community to be offensive, unwise, immoral, or wrong-headed” and emphasised that “[d]issent and protest should be affirmatively welcomed, not merely tolerated, by the University.” The boundaries set by the “Picker Report” have by no means been extra vital.

Randy and I each sat on the sixth ground of the UChicago regulation library: he in his workplace, me in my JSD carrel. Randy was normally there—he walked to the regulation college irrespective of how chilly it was exterior—and his door was at all times open to anybody stopping by. I nonetheless have the recording of the 90-minute (!) voice message with feedback he despatched on my job speak paper. Every time I’m engaged on a paper, I take deliberate pauses to attempt to think about “what would Randy tell me?” This train inevitably improves no matter I’m engaged on, however irrespective of how a lot I attempted, it by no means matched after I talked to him in individual or over the telephone.

And sure, it’s bizarre to commonly stumble upon your PhD supervisor within the single-stall, UChicago rest room. But what individuals who by no means interacted with Randy might not know is that he was additionally a terrific and enjoyable individual. He truly took improv comedy lessons close to UChicago, and sure weekends of the yr, we might exit in a gaggle of scholars to see him carry out in Hyde Park. UChicago regulation has a conventional scholar musical that pokes enjoyable at lecturers, and it’s inconceivable to neglect Randy’s distinctive laughter anytime somebody opened a can of Diet Coke on stage to roast him a bit, or whereas having a drink at Medici, near his home.

For the previous 10 years or so, Randy had been engaged on his ebook—The Quest for Next—which examines how antitrust enforcement has traditionally formed innovation in expertise markets. When everybody was specializing in short-term costs, he targeted on concepts and spent years combing by historic newspapers and paperwork, visiting archives, speaking to folks, and fascinating with such a posh matter with the rigor, open-mindedness, and fervour that formed his profession.

The manuscript is generally prepared and is because of be printed by Princeton University Press within the close to future. Two years in the past, we invited Randy to debate the concepts in his manuscript because the keynote speaker of the 2024 Stigler Center for the Study of the Economy and the State‘s annual antitrust convention (in a dialog with Tim Wu). The keynote is 100% Randy: dozens of considerate slides and feedback, good jokes, and impeccable timing.

I encourage everybody to take heed to Randy’s exceptional lecture. Do so whereas ingesting a can of Diet Coke. I’m positive it might make him glad.

May he relaxation in peace. And might his household discover at the least some consolation figuring out that his legacy lives on by the constructive distinction he made within the lives of numerous college students, together with mine.

Articles signify the opinions of their writers, not essentially these of the University of Chicago, the Booth School of Business, or its school.

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