Randal Picker (A.B. ’80, A.M. ’82, J.D. ’85), the James Parker Hall Distinguished Service Professor of Law at the University of Chicago Law School, passed away on Saturday. He was 66 years old.

The cause of Picker’s death was not immediately available.

Picker “was a remarkably generous colleague, one of our most beloved teachers, an accomplished scholar, and a widely respected commentator on antitrust law and technology policy,” Law School Dean Adam Chilton wrote to faculty, according to a blog post by law professor Brian Leiter.

In another message to faculty, Provost Katherine Baicker wrote that Picker “was an extraordinarily generous and influential University citizen whose dedication and energy for the institution were seemingly boundless,” and that he “leaves an indelible mark across the University.”

After attending UChicago and receiving his undergraduate, master’s, and law degrees, Picker briefly departed the University to clerk for federal appellate Judge Richard Posner and spent time as a lawyer working in bankruptcy and debt restructuring before returning in 1989 to teach at the Law School.

He served as an associate dean from 1994 to 1996, was a member of the Council of the University Senate, and became a distinguished service professor in 2013. Picker was also a member of the faculty committee advising the Board of Trustees during its search for a new president in 2020. Outside of the University, Picker was a member of the National Bankruptcy Conference and a commissioner from Illinois to the Uniform Law Commission.

Picker was an expert in antitrust, bankruptcy, and intellectual property law. He testified before Congress numerous times and published more than three dozen journal articles and six books over the course of his career. Picker was also a frequent contributor to ProMarket, a publication of the Stigler Center at the Booth School of Business, and reviewed submissions for several academic journals.

Earlier this summer, Picker was appointed to serve as the University’s vice provost for academic affairs, tasked with overseeing all academic appointments and aligning institutional practices with the Kalven Report, a 1967 document outlining the University’s commitment to free inquiry and institutional neutrality.

During the pandemic, Picker taught a virtual seminar on antitrust to 24 Law School alumni from a wide range of graduation years aimed at recreating the “interactive nature of the classroom” for an online audience.

“Before this, I hadn’t ever had an opportunity to be in class with such a wide variety of people in various industries, who are in different stages of their careers, and who have varying levels of expertise on the subject,” Karice Rhule (J.D. ’16) told Law School news at the time.

Picker was also a member of “seemingly every significant committee in the Law School and across the University,” according to Chilton, notably chairing the 2016–17 committee that established UChicago’s current system for handling disruptive conduct.

In a 2025 interview with the Maroon, Picker emphasized that the purpose of reforming the disciplinary system was not solely to create a “punishment regime,” but to educate students on how best to exercise their rights to free expression safely.

University administrators “were focused on creating a disciplinary regime for [disruptive conduct]. I said ‘That’s great, we should do that, but I also want to create an educational regime,’” Picker told the Maroon in 2017. “Discipline is a small part of what we do; education is a huge part of what we do.”

The Picker committee’s final recommendation—instituted as the Disciplinary System for Disruptive Conduct—modernized the little-used All-University Disciplinary System, creating an independent committee to review disruptive conduct cases, shielding disciplinary proceedings from public view, and allowing any member of the University community to submit a claim to the committee for consideration. The disruptive conduct committee was most recently convened in the wake of pro-Palestine protests two years ago and faced scrutiny over allegations that University administrators had improperly intervened to temporarily withhold the degrees of several students who participated in the protests.

In addition to his academic and administrative work for the University, Picker began practicing improv comedy in 2013 and performed at the Revival—now Definition Theatre—in 2016.

“It’s been an interesting exercise to be a pure student again,” Picker said of his comedy education in an interview with Law School news. “I’d forgotten what that’s like, and I’d forgotten how intimidating it is. There’s this whole, ‘Am I doing a good job? How do you tell?’ And there’s the uncertainty that goes with feeling that. Experiencing that again has been super healthy.”

We ask anyone who has memories to share about Professor Picker to please contact us at editor@chicagomaroon.com.