Posted by:  UT-1  VIEWS: 35

Date: 2022-02-02 00:14:43

My cousin is dead (1966 - 2022) ... Michael Sullivan, our dear colleague and friend, died on January 31st, 2022 after a brief illness unrelated to CoVid. A gifted teacher and mentor to a generation of Emory students, his loss is grievous and heartbreaking. Michael came to Emory in 2000 after completing a PhD in philosophy at Vanderbilt and a JD at Yale. His research and teaching focused on issues in the philosophy of law, ranging from the justice of mandatory sentencing to the intricacies of constitutional theory, with a particular focus on judicial review and its potential, counter-majoritarian character. He approached these issues from the standpoint of Deweyean pragmatism, which he defended against critics in Legal Pragmatism (2007). But he also resisted what he took to be overly thin applications of pragmatism to the law, most prominently in “Can Pragmatism Be Radical?,” a piece co-authored with Daniel Solove, which appeared in the Yale Law Journal. As a teacher, Michael loved teaching PHIL 115, Ethics, and PHIL 321, Philosophy of Law, which prepared a generation of Emory students for law school through its careful attention to case law in the context of legal theory. A demanding teacher with a fine nose for argument, students were drawn to the standards of excellence that he expected all of us to meet. Michael is survived by his partner, Le Wei, their son, John John Sullivan, his mother Margaret, his cousin Mary, and many other cousins as well as several loving friends. No funeral is expected but the department will host a memorial service. Please look to the Department’s web page for information about that event. From: http://philosophy.emory.edu/home/index.html #philosophy #teacher #professor #deceased #cousin #thinker #pragmatism #sullivan #RIP