If you ask, Michael will tell you that it was Joseph McCormick, S.J., who first suggested law school. He was the dean of students at Fairfield University where this bright-eyed boy from the Bronx proved himself to be both scholar and athlete, a born leader and eloquent orator. As college graduation grew closer, Jesuit wisdom steered Michael toward the LSAT, which was being given that weekend. Naïve to the difficulty of the task before him, but never one to back down from a challenge, Michael walked in, took the test and won a scholarship to St. John’s Law School.

Friends who know Michael seem to think that his call to justice is rooted in the old sod of County Cavan, from where the Mullen men first hailed. Michael inherited the work ethic of Irish immigrants, their deep faith and a well-formed conscience, nurtured through Catholic education and his participation in parish life at St. Raymond’s in Eastchester.
Hearing the testimonies of the hundreds of friends and colleagues who attended his retirement dinner July 26, I was convinced that the Honorable Michael F. Mullen’s stellar career on the bench was born in God’s imagination more than 70 years ago. Michael said that when donning his judicial robe he often felt like a priest vesting for Mass. St. Paul might have said he was clothing himself in Christ, in the compassion with which he consecrated the courtroom. He carried his faith onto the bench, as he did his mother’s rosary beads, be-cause presiding in State Supreme Court was a holy endeavor, a re-sponse to the Divine Lawmaker’s call to become a benediction on a weary world where lives and the law often clashed.

Attorneys, court clerks and his fellow jurists all bore witness to the fact that Judge Mullen’s court was a forum where faith unfolded daily, where heaven and earth met mysteriously, sometimes seamlessly and most poetically. He could unearth the Good News with gusto and grace under any circumstance. Even before the cruelest criminal, His Honor upheld his belief that through Jesus, every human being deserved the dignity conferred to us through the Incarnation. Judge Mullen embodied the dictum of St. Francis, “Preach the Gospel at all times, and when necessary, use words.” When necessary, Michael Mullen could quote the law with the same ease with which he recited Scripture or the works of Irish wordsmiths, most often William Butler Yeats. He could create communion between time and eternity, the living and the dead, the saints of heaven and the sinners who stood before him for sentencing. His vocation was as rooted in his baptism as it was his law books.

The fortitude to follow his conscience, to fill the long length of his days with a generous regard for the poor and downtrodden was fortified by his faith, his lifelong friendships, the love of his wonderful wife, Ann Marie, and his six spectacular children. No doubt their influence inspired him to create a job-sharing situation for female attorneys who were balancing both career and kids. These women, whose kids are now in college, testified to how many lives were transformed because Judge Mullen cared to be creative with the things that matter most in life.

This week, the Honorable Michael F. Mullen will lay down his gavel and give rest to his robe because his 70 years force retirement. The perfect blend that brought the vitality of youth and the wisdom of age to Suffolk County Supreme Court will be sorely missed by friend and foe alike. Both would say that he was always fair, often funny, quick witted and wise in ways that few jurists before him could claim. He will have more time to devote to his role as “Da” to his 16 grandchildren, and the many ministries with which he and Ann Marie have shared themselves through the years. Their home will continue to be a blessed bastion where the fare of the day is an ongoing feast celebrating life and Irish ancestry. The court’s loss is the gain of Touro Law School where Michael Mullen will no doubt make the law dance for his students, influencing the justice system well beyond his earthly existence.

He was the jurist, the poet, the priest, the presider, son of Erin who cherished the blessings of a Bronx boyhood and summers on the beach at Breezy Point.
Here’s hoping that Michael Mullen goes with God, in His peace, into retirement, knowing he has consecrated the courts with the kindness and compassion of Christ, with the wit of Ireland, the words of America’s founders, and of course, the sacred Scriptures.
Surely the hearts of his colleagues will fly at half mast for years to come, believing as Hamlet did of his dad, “We shall not look upon his like again.”