Professor Dan Morrissey's Distinguished Career
Dan Morrissey, who recently retired from his full-time professorship at Gonzaga Law, found practicing corporate law fascinating when he was a young lawyer in Los Angeles. He was sharp and well-trained, having gone to Georgetown for law school, clerked for a federal judge, and worked at the Securities and Exchange Commission before landing at his firm. But something about him was always elsewhere. “Some of my colleagues would say that I was always more interested in the theoretical aspects of the law,” Morrissey says.
This observation hit home in an unexpected way. Morrissey had already been doing some part-time teaching at Loyola Marymount and Pepperdine law schools. It’s where he discovered the passions that would govern the rest of his career: helping young lawyers and doing serious legal scholarship.
“As an academic, you have more freedom to write about the issues you care about,” he says. “And I knew I’d find it fulfilling to help young people starting their careers in the law. So, I made the move to a full-time academic position.”
He started this new phase at the University of Tulsa College of Law, where he taught contracts, securities, corporations, and jurisprudence for more than a decade, earning tenure along the way. Morrissey also taught as a visitor at other law schools like Seton Hall and the University of Denver. On the side, he became involved in politics, running for Congress and chairing the Democratic Party in Oklahoma. Morrissey gained administrative skills and was chosen as Dean of St. Thomas University College of Law in Miami, a role that sharpened his sense of what a law school could, and maybe should, be.
He brought that vision to Gonzaga in 2001, where he arrived as dean just as the Law School’s new facility opened its doors.
Gonzaga had always been known as a strong teaching institution, and when Morrissey arrived, he brought an enhanced commitment to scholarship. He made it a central priority, raising expectations for professors to do high-level legal writing. “When I came to Gonzaga, I emphasized scholarship more than had been the case in the past,” he says. “And that’s continued to be a real factor here, for hiring, promotion, and how we support the faculty. And it has lifted the school’s profile on the national scene. In addition, scholarship supports better teaching.”
Morrissey himself exemplifies that. He has coauthored a casebook on securities litigation and has written numerous law review articles about the topics he teaches in corporate law. He is also called on by law firms around the country to serve as an expert witness and consultant in their cases.
He plans to continue these activities and will maintain his connection with Gonzaga as an emeritus faculty member. In addition this fall, Morrissey will return to St. Thomas University College of Law to teach contracts. At the heart of Morrissey’s approach to law is a devotion to justice. An ideal, he says, that finds its fullest expression at a Jesuit institution like Gonzaga, a school he’s been proud to be part of for the past 25 years. “Lawyers should find satisfaction helping other people, and that outlook certainly has a moral dimension and maybe even a religious one. For that reason, law is a noble profession, and I’m proud to have served it.”