Sullivan, Winnifred Fallers 1950-

PERSONAL:

Born April 12, 1950. Education: Cornell University, B.A., 1971; University of Chicago, J.D., 1976, Ph.D., 1993.

ADDRESSES:

Office—University at Buffalo Law School, State University of New York, 317 O'Brian Hall, North Campus, Buffalo, NY 14260-1100. E-mail—wfs2@buffalo.edu.

CAREER:

Academic. State University of New York at Buffalo School of Law, associate professor of law, director of the Law and Religion Program. Visiting fellow at American Bar Foundation and Martin Marty Center; Lilly Foundation fellow, National Humanities Center, 2007-08; Mattingly Distinguished Visiting Scholar, Nebraska Wesleyan University, 2008.

MEMBER:

National Association for the Study of Religion (executive committee), American Society for the Study of Religion and the Law (executive committee), Religion and Culture Group of the American Academy of Religion (executive committee).

WRITINGS:

Paying the Words Extra: Religious Discourse in the Supreme Court of the United States, Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA), 1994.

The Impossibility of Religious Freedom, Princeton University Press (Princeton, NJ), 2005.

Editorial board member of Religion and Society.

SIDELIGHTS:

Winnifred Fallers Sullivan is an academic. Born on April 12, 1950, she completed a bachelor of arts degree at Cornell University in 1971. She then continued her higher education with graduate studies at the University of Chicago, earning a juris doctorate in 1976 and a Ph.D. in 1993. Sullivan eventually became an associate professor of law at the State University of New York at Buffalo School of Law. She also served as the director of the Law and Religion Program, highlighting her two primary academic interests.

Sullivan has held a number of fellowships and other scholarly positions in addition to her time in Buffalo. She has been a visiting fellow at both the American Bar Foundation and the Martin Marty Center. From 2007 to 2008 she served as a Lilly Foundation fellow at the National Humanities Center. In 2008 she was also the Mattingly Distinguished Visiting Scholar at Nebraska Wesleyan University. She is on the editorial board of Religion and Society.

Sullivan published her first book, Paying the Words Extra: Religious Discourse in the Supreme Court of the United States, in 1994. The book analyzes the 1983 Supreme Court case of Lynch v. Donnelly on the divisions of church and state where the town of Pawtucket, Rhode Island, was given permission to build a Christmas area in a public area in attempts to encourage holiday shopping in the town.

John T. McGreevy, reviewing the book in Commonweal, commented that "Sullivan's diagnosis is astute, as is her careful reading of each justice's opinion. Her remedy is less clear." However, McGreevy observed that "Sullivan shrewdly identifies a fault line running through much of contemporary American society and intellectual life." McGreevy pointed out that Sullivan does not think that "government should promote prayer in the schools, or build nativity scenes." McGreevy noted, though, that what she does "request is a more sophisticated conversation about these matters, a conversation that" Sullivan does "a good deal to advance."

In 2005 Sullivan published The Impossibility of Religious Freedom. This book pushes the argument that, despite the widely touted concept, the United States is incapable of offering religious freedom. She uses the Warren v. Boca Raton case, one where she was used as an expert witness, as the basis for her argument. The case dealt with the laying of religious symbols and tributes on public grave sites.

Booklist contributor Bryce Christensen remarked that the book provides "a provocative critique of any expansive understanding of religious freedom." Christensen concluded that "as religious belief continues to diversify in multicultural America, the urgency of the issues here raised guarantees" the author "many interested readers." Laurence Moore, writing in American Scholar, remarked that "there is undoubtedly much to argue with in Sullivan's faulting of Judge Ryskamp's opinion, but before she allows a reader to go very far down that path, she switches the discussion to suggest that any outcome in this case would have failed to provide equity." Moore summarized that "Sullivan's book has the great virtue of placing abstract legal dilemmas in the concrete realities of everyday life. Even so, her case may be a bit overblown. In my mind, the general protection offered to religion and to speech (perhaps a secular equivalent to religion) remains an important principle and one that, however confused the legal process, can be given more than adequate force in jurisdictions that recognize it." Moore reasoned that "a simpler conclusion to draw from Sullivan's book than the need to ‘forsake religious liberty’ is that Florida ought to repeal its Religious Freedom Restoration Act. Religion would remain in a special category of protection but not in ways that grossly discriminate against nonreligious Americans."

Brad S. Matthies, writing in Library Journal, mentioned that some readers "may find Sullivan's use of legal language dry at times." However, Matthies conceded that Sullivan successfully argues "that religious freedoms are not as free as" many believe. A contributor to First Things: A Monthly Journal of Religion and Public Life wrote that the book is "a valuable contribution to ‘church-state’ studies, a genre of which there likely will be no end." The same contributor called Sullivan's argument "provocative, if not always persuasive."

Daniel A. Dombrowski, writing in the Journal of Church and State, observed that "this book will be a breath of fresh air for those who have tired of debates regarding abortion, school prayer, and other familiar battlegrounds in the tension between church and state. This tension looks somewhat different when seen from the perspective of those who have seemingly lost everything: a loved one." Reviewing the book in Church History, Kathleen Flake commented that "as a religious studies approach to the arbitration of legal interests, this book merits use in a variety of classroom settings, if for no other reasons that it will compel consideration of the problem that religious loyalties pose to a modern liberal state. Students of the law will rightly object to much of this argument." Flake concluded that "Sullivan's book provides an excellent opportunity to engage in" the debate between church and state.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Scholar, June 22, 2005, Laurence Moore, review of The Impossibility of Religious Freedom, p. 128.

Booklist, June 1, 2005, Bryce Christensen, review of The Impossibility of Religious Freedom, p. 1724.

Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, June 1, 1995, J.R. Vile, review of Paying the Words Extra: Religious Discourse in the Supreme Court of the United States, p. 1673; January 1, 2006, C. Barner-Barry, review of The Impossibility of Religious Freedom, p. 934.

Church History, March 1, 2007, Kathleen Flake, review of The Impossibility of Religious Freedom, p. 219.

Commonweal, June 16, 1995, John T. McGreevy, review of Paying the Words Extra, p. 24.

First Things: A Monthly Journal of Religion and Public Life, December 1, 2005, review of The Impossibility of Religious Freedom, p. 63.

Harvard Law Review, March 1, 1996, review of Paying the Words Extra, p. 1174.

History of Religions, November 1, 1997, Hans G. Kippenberg, review of Paying the Words Extra, p. 184.

Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, September 1, 1995, Phillip E. Hammond, review of Paying the Words Extra, p. 398.

Journal of Church and State, spring, 1996, Trent D. Austin, review of Paying the Words Extra, p. 422; winter, 2006, Daniel A. Dombrowski, review of The Impossibility of Religious Freedom, p. 203.

Library Journal, May 1, 2005, Brad S. Matthies, review of The Impossibility of Religious Freedom, p. 93.

ONLINE

State University of New York at Buffalo, School of Law Web site,http://www.law.buffalo.edu/ (July 8, 2008), author profile.