Saul

According to the Hebrew Bible, Saul (/sɔːl/; Hebrew: שָׁאוּל, Šāʼûl ; "asked for, prayed for"; Latin: Saul; Arabic: طالوت‎, Ṭālūt or Arabic: شاؤل‎, Shā'ūl) was the first king of a united Kingdom of Israel and Judah. His reign, traditionally placed in the late 11th century BCE, would have marked a switch from a tribal society to statehood.

The oldest accounts of Saul's life and reign are found in the Hebrew Bible. He was reluctantly anointed by the prophet Samuel in response to a popular movement to establish a monarchy, and reigned from Gibeah. After initial successes he lost favor with Samuel and God because of his disobedience to God. His son-in-law, David, was chosen by God to be a king. He fell on his sword (committed suicide) to avoid capture at the battle against the Philistines at Mount Gilboa. He was succeeded by his son, Ish-bosheth, whose brief reign was successfully contested by David. A similar yet different account of Saul's life is given in the Qur'an. Neither the length of Saul's reign, nor the extent of his territory are given in the Biblical account; the former is traditionally fixed at twenty or twenty-two years, but there is no reliable evidence for these numbers.

Saul Levmore

Saul Levmore (born 1953) is the William B. Graham Distinguished Service Professor of Law, and former Dean of the University of Chicago Law School. He joined the faculty of the law school in 1998 and became Dean in 2001. In March, 2009, Levmore stated that he would step down as Dean and return to the faculty of the University of Chicago Law School. A search committee was formed and announced Dean Michael Schill of UCLA as his successor on September 8, 2009. Levmore's tenure as Dean ended on December 31, 2009.

Levmore had turned down the Deanship in 1994, citing the time it would take away from his family. Levmore is married to Professor Julie Roin, who also teaches at the Law School.

His current research interests include information markets, public choice, commercial and corporate law, contracts, and torts. He has also written in the areas of game theory, reparations for slavery, insurance and terrorism, product liability, tax law, the development of real and intellectual property rights, and the regulation of obesity. He is widely published on these and other topics, and is the author of Super Strategies for Games and Puzzles and Foundations of Tort Law. He is the co-editor (with Martha C. Nussbaum) of the book The Offensive Internet: Speech, Privacy, and Reputation, published in 2010 by Harvard University Press; he also contributed an article on internet anonymity. Levmore and Nussbaum have also edited a volume entitled "American Guy: Masculinity in American Law and Literature," which will be published by Oxford University Press in 2014; Levmore contributed an article on informants and whistle-blowers in literature.