Michael Mullan - Trinity Law and Business alumnus RIP 1991 - 2020

Since graduating with a First from Trinity in 2014 Michael completed an LLM at Harvard Law School and was undertaking a SJD (PhD equivalent) at American University Washington College of Law. Michael was well known nationally and in the States arising from his battles with cancer, once as an infant and ongoing as a young adult. He had more than once overcome a fatal prognosis. Michael and his wife Mel, with the great support of family and friends, worked courageously to build Michael’s academic career along with outreach activities to give hope and encouragement; they visited children with cancer in hospital, promoted many fundraising events, and gave radio and print media interviews where Michael’s great personality and popularity shone through.

Michael’s graduate research pursed a long-standing interest in the rights of people with disabilities and he was examining the insanity defence utilising criminal theory and equality perspectives. Michael was a remarkably gifted legal academic whose undergrad dissertation at Trinity – a criminological study of the court-related experiences of victims of crime who have disabilities – was subsequently published in the Sociological Review. His most recent journal publication was “How Should Mental Illness Be Relevant to Sentencing?” (2018-2020) 88 Mississippi Law Journal 255 and he was a notable commentator in recent times on developments with the insanity defence in the United States. Other notable achievements include winning the graduate student’s humanitarian award for work with Harvard’s Project on Disability and Prisoners’ Legal Assistance Fund. Also at Harvard, Michael co-edited the Harvard Journal of Human Rights and was a research assistant to professors Jeannie Suk and Michael Stein. Michael’s passion was to effect progressive change in legal doctrine and his work and memory will continue to inspire.

Thanks to Prof David Prendergast for the fitting words above.