Law professor Randal Picker composed a spontaneous poem he called "An Ode to Dick Posner" for an audience of 80 visiting Chinese legal scholars Thursday at the University of Chicago.

Picker wrote as he read aloud:

Oh to be a federal judge,
Treated like royalty and Justin Bieber.
Sought after by all, he floats across the ether.

Picker's point was that his poem, no matter how lousy, qualified for life plus 70 years of copyright protection under U.S. law. The content itself would have seemed ridiculous had I not been sitting behind a scholar so enamored of Posner, whose lecture preceded Picker's, that she had him autograph the back of her dress with a black pen.

Posner is a federal appellate court judge in Chicago, the author of nearly 40 books on economics and the law, a blogger and one of America's most-cited legal scholars. He is thin and wore wire glasses, a suit that looked a size too big and a Cuban-style fedora that he removed when he walked inside.

Read more at Chicago Tribune