Bill, a beloved law professor, profile writer, revered intellectual, and senior faculty member at the University of South Carolina School of Law, died Sept. 22, 2014, in Columbia, S.C.
Born 1934 in Orange, N.J., to Helen Elizabeth and John Joseph Quirk, Bill was for nearly half a century a fixture at the University of South Carolina’s law school, where he taught taxation and the Constitution. His remarkable cadre of friends included many of his students, and perhaps his favorite activity was to talk legal and political theory with them.
After graduating from Princeton and receiving his law degree from the University of Virginia in 1959, he spent 10 years in New York City, first in private practice, then as counsel to the department of buildings and the law department of the City of New York. He loved the New York culture, but despite this love, he was a devoted lifelong fan of the Boston Red Sox. He wrote about everything from the causes of the economic collapse of 2008, to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s tax returns. In his writings on government policy he urged a return to the Jeffersonian principles that he held dear. To his survivors, the class sends sympathy.