Remembering Our Founder
The Honorable Thomas E. Brennan, founder of the Thomas M. Cooley Law School and former Chief Justice of the Michigan Supreme Court, died peacefully surrounded by his loving family on Sept. 29, 2018 at the age of 89. He has been called one of the most important innovators in legal education of the past 40 years. A visionary. A risk-taker. An “idea guy.” His legacy reaches far beyond the founding of the Thomas M. Cooley Law School, rippling through the lives of more than 20,000 graduates of the institution he imagined back in 1972, touching even the lives of generations of people he never would meet.