Distinguished Alumni Recognition for 2007
Richard Donnelly '38

Photograph: Richard Donnelly.Richard Donnelly graduated from Washburn University with a Bachelor of Arts in 1936 and with a law degree from Washburn Law in 1938. He received a JSD from Yale Law School in 1949.

Donnelly was admitted to practice in Kansas in 1938 and began private practice. He served as attorney for the Federal Land Bank of Wichita, from 1938 to 1942. For three years, he served in WWII. Donnelly's first teaching assignment was with Washburn Law from 1946 to 1947. From 1947 to 1948 he was the Sterling Fellow at Yale Law School. Donnelly accepted the position of associate professor of law at the University of Virginia in 1948 and taught there until 1950. He joined Yale Law School in 1950 as associate professor of Law. In 1953 he became professor of law and served in that capacity until his death in June 1966. At Yale, Donnelly taught criminal law, criminal procedure, evidence, and law and psychiatry. Donnelly's specialty was criminal law. His colleagues at Yale described him as, "One of the earliest members of a small but well respected band of innovators who brought to the study of the criminal process the range of insights to be found in the disciplines of psychiatry, psychology and sociology. Through his teachings and writings he imparted to his students his deep concern for the welfare and rehabilitation of society's offenders." Donnelly was the Simeon E. Baldwin Professor of Law at Yale. He was the lead author of a 1962 Criminal Law textbook and authority on mental health law.

Donnelly is the only Washburn Law graduate to teach at both the University of Virginia and at Yale. Donnelly died May 1980, at the age of 65.