Richard Allen Epstein is an American legal scholar known for his writings on torts, contracts, property rights, law and economics, classical liberalism, and libertarianism. He is the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Law at New York University and the director of the Classical Liberal Institute. He also serves as a Senior Research Fellow at the Civitas Institute, as the Peter and Kirsten Bedford Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, and as a senior lecturer and the James Parker Hall Distinguished Service Professor of Law Emeritus at the University of Chicago.