Rev. Degnan, who graduated from Seton Hall Law in 1954 as a member of its first graduating class, served as dean from1978 until 1983 and remained a member of the faculty until 1990. As dean, he established the Alumni Office and Alumni Council to build a community extending beyond the student years and across generations. In 1990, he left Seton Hall Law to become the president of St. Peter’s College, an office he held until 1995, as he also continued to teach at Seton Hall Law as an adjunct professor.

He once wrote that the law “needs more than good men and women. It needs highly skilled professionals, persons who spring from a long tradition of bench and bar. It needs wisdom, a deep knowledge of society's principles, prudence, compassion, and perhaps in our time especially, the ability to distinguish what law can do from an urge to assume the powers of the gods.”

A graduate of Seton Hall Prep and Georgetown University, Rev. Degnan served in the United States Navy between high school and college. After practicing law in Newark for several years, he entered the Society of Jesus in 1958, earned degrees in philosophy and sacred theology as well as an LL.M. from Harvard Law School, and was ordained a priest in 1966.

Rev. Degnan was a teaching fellow at Harvard Law School before becoming a professor at Syracuse Law School. After five years at Syracuse, two years as a visiting professor at Georgetown and a year at Loyola Maryland, he joined the Seton Hall Law faculty.

Rev. Degnan was elected a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation and served on the New Jersey Supreme Court Advisory Commission on Judicial Conduct. He served on the board of many schools, including Fairfield University and the University of Detroit. He also served on the Liberty State Park Development Corporation.

The wake will be held at St. Aedan's Church, 800 Bergen Avenue, Jersey City, on Wednesday, March 21, from 2:00 to 6:00 p.m. The funeral mass, also at St. Aedan's, will be at 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday night.