David Lyons

David Lyons was born in New York City in 1935 and educated in the New York City public schools. In the 1950s he attended the Cooper Union School of Engineering and worked as a machinist and as an engineering draftsman. He married Sandra Nemiroff in 1955; they have three children and two grandchildren.

After returning to school, Lyons received a BA from Brooklyn College in 1960 and a PhD from Harvard University in 1963. He spent the following year at Oxford University on a traveling fellowship from Harvard. He was appointed Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Cornell University in 1964 and became Associate Professor of Philosophy in 1967, Professor of Philosophy in 1971, Professor of Law in 1979, and Susan Linn Sage Professor of Philosophy in 1990. He served as Chair of Cornell's Philosophy Department from 1978 to 1984. After retiring from Cornell in 1995, he became Professor of Law and Professor of Philosophy at Boston University.

Lyons held a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1970-71, a Society for the Humanities Fellowship in 1972-73, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities in 1977-78, 1984-85, and1993-94. His books include FORMS AND LIMITS OF UTILITARIANISM (Oxford 1965); IN THE INTEREST OF THE GOVERNED (Oxford 1973); ETHICS AND THE RULE OF LAW (Cambridge 1984); MORAL ASPECTS OF LEGAL THEORY (Cambridge 1993); and RIGHTS, WELFARE, AND MILL'S MORAL THEORY (Oxford 1994). He has also edited RIGHTS (Wadsworth 1979) and MILL'S UTILITARIANISM: CRITICAL ESSAYS (Rowman & Littlefield 1997).

David Lyons
Professor of Law and of Philosophy
Boston University
765 Commonwealth Avenue
Boston, MA 02215
tel. (617) 353-3135; fax (617) 353-3077