Law, Imagination, and the Life of the Mind

Whether he’s running political campaigns or writing novels, in the classroom or in the courtroom, Professor Michael Cecil has built his life around a central question: “How deep does the well of the mind go?” And like all the best questions, it doesn’t demand an answer, but energy and attention.

This question animates Cecil’s two great passions: the law and writing fiction. Prima facie, these might look like opposite pursuits. The law rests on precedent and rigor; fiction employs freedom and imagination. But for Cecil, they’re complementary pursuits that allow him to explore the world in different ways.

“We live in reality,” he laughs. “But let’s not let dogma or tradition completely guide how we think.”

Cecil grew up in Southern California and was a late bloomer, intellectually. During his junior year of college, he had an awakening and became newly invested in political science, philosophy, and journalism. His curiosity was insatiable and he had the drive to match it.

After college, he spent several years working for political campaigns. His work in communications, organizing, and policy development placed him at the center of many campaigns, including former president Barack Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign. But the closer he got to politics, the further away societal change seemed. He saw the law as a path to a deeper understanding of societal dynamics. He enrolled in Georgetown Law and went on to earn an LL.M. from NYU. After practicing immigration law in Baltimore and Arlington, Virginia, he concluded that in-court work addresses downstream problems. He wanted to train attention on upstream problems, which meant teaching lawyers how the law is made.

At Gonzaga, Cecil teaches constitutional law, jurisprudence, federal courts, and legislation. His approach in the classroom is improvisational – “More Broadway than Hollywood,” he jokes. While he always has a destination in mind, he likes to let the journey take its own shape through conversation and discovery.

“I’m trying to be a small part of an ancient debate,” he says. “We’ve been asking jurisprudence questions for thousands of years, from Athens and Rome to now. So long as there’s society, there will be questions about the best rules to govern it.”

When the teaching day ends, Cecil turns his attention to his fiction, where he gives his imagination free rein. He writes longhand, filling notebooks with his cursive, feeling the world he’s building come alive under his pen.

“I care about producing work that challenges me, that tells me something about myself,” he says. “I want to know if I can do something I haven’t done before.”