2007 marked the 70th anniversary of the publication of British-born Professor Ronald Coase's landmark paper "The Nature of the Firm" which established the field of transaction cost economics. 54 years later Coase would win the Nobel Prize in Economics  "for his discovery and clarification of the significance of transaction costs and property rights for the institutional structure and functioning of the economy."

I know Professor Coase more for his 1961 paper "The Problem of Social Cost" which set out was is now known as the Coase Theorem. The paper set out a new field of law and economics and when Professor Coase joined the University of Chicago Law School faculty three years later, he established the school as the leading institution in the world for the economic analysis of law.

I had the privilege of attending law school at the University of Chicago and Professor Coase's scholarship has had an ongoing influence in the way I look at law including immigration law. At 97, by the way, Ronald Coase is still going strong and continuing his research. I hope folks are one day able to say the same about me.