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1. Visiting professorís travels bring fresh perspective to law students
2. Faculty News

Visiting professor’s travels bring
fresh perspective to law students

From Boston to Budapest, teaching has taken Timothy Waters literally around the globe. For now, however, the law school visiting professor is content with instructing students in international criminal law and international human rights law.

“I’m really enjoying the Ole Miss experience,” said Waters, who earned degrees from the University of California at Los Angeles and Columbia and Harvard universities. “The students are interesting and interested. The faculty has been friendly and supportive. My wife and I really enjoy living in Oxford.”

A Los Angeles native, Waters said his teaching career may have been sparked in his childhood.

“My parents were both teachers in elementary and high schools,” he said. “After UCLA, I taught in the L.A. public schools, but it didn’t take me long to determine that I wanted to teach at a different level.”

Instead, Waters joined the Peace Corps, serving in new programs opening up behind the former Iron Curtain. After law school, he worked in the war tribunal in The Hague for two years. Then it was on to Budapest, where he served as a consultant for assessing the justice systems of countries’ joining the European Union.

“The European Union is one of the most fascinating experiments in the world today,” said Waters, whose research specialty is international law and human rights. Referring to the Balkan countries moving toward membership in the European Union, Waters said, “I’m not convinced that the end of conflicts in the ’90s ended the circumstances that led to the outbreak of violence in the first place.

“The union will probably remain in a state of transition for another 15 to 20 years. Joining all these integrated communities requires a lot of compromises.”

After returning to the U.S., Waters became a research fellow at Harvard. His international law and political science studies have resulted in several articles published in scholarly journals. He was on the faculty at Boston University when a colleague at American University informed him of the law school vacancy here and recommended him to a UM law professor.

“Given his strong academic background, substantial teaching record, outstanding series of publications and his reputation, Waters seemed like a strong candidate,” said UM’s Croft Associate Professor of International Law Charles “Chip” Brower. “I have visited his class and found him to have a very good rapport with the students, a mastery of facilities and a quiet, confident teaching manner.”

When he’s not in class or conducting research, Waters enjoys going to movies, playing German board games and regularly taking trips with his wife to surrounding towns and cities in Mississippi and Louisiana.

“We’ve eaten at a lot of the out-of-the-way places renowned for their specialties,” he said. “I’ve become a huge fan of grits.”

While having enjoyed living in several major cities, Waters finds Oxford a nice change of pace.

“It’s as charming as it is small,” he said.

—Edwin Smith

Faculty News

Professor Debbie Bell’s article, “Bell on Mississippi Family Law: A Comprehensive Treatise on Mississippi Family Law,” was published in the Aug. 24 issue of the Mississippi Business Journal.

Professor John R. Bradley was recruited for the fifth time to participate in an American Bar Association law school accreditation inspection. ABA teams visit a school, conduct an inspection of its educational and financial programs and make a detailed written report to the ABA Accreditation Committee. Bradley’s latest assignment was with the team that visited the Charleston School of Law, a new school seeking to become the second accredited law school in South Carolina.

Professor Chip Brower has become a member of the London Court of International Arbitration. Brower’s article, “Mitsubishi, Investor-State Arbitration and the Law of State Immunity,” appeared in the American University International Law Review, along with a response by Professor Jack Coe of Pepperdine University. Another article by Brower, “Why the FTC Notes of Interpretation Constitute a Partial Amendment of NAFTA Article 1105,” will soon appear in the Virginia Journal of International Law.

Professor Mercer Bullard was a visiting professor in the fall at Washington University School of Law, where he presented a working paper, “Government Sponsored Money Market Funds: A New Disintermediation.” His article, “Insider Trading in Mutual Funds,” will be published in the Oregon Law Review in the spring. Another article, “The Visible Hand in Government-Sponsored Financial Services: Why States Should Not Sponsor 529 Plans,” was the subject of an Oct. 31 article in Investment News (“States Should Stay Out of 529 Biz, Fund Watchdog Says”) and will be published in the Cincinnati Law Review in the spring. His article “The Mutual Fund as a Firm: Fund Arbitrage, Frequent Trading and the SEC’s Response to the Mutual Fund Scandal” on the mutual fund scandal was selected for the Yale/Stanford Jr. Faculty Forum and will be published by the Houston Law Review in the spring. Also appearing this spring will be his comments on a symposium piece in the Washington University Law Quarterly, and his article comparing U.S. and Chinese mutual fund regulation will be published in an international collection of articles about mutual funds.

Bullard was appointed to the Mutual Fund Advisory Committee for the Consumer Federation of America, and he continues to serve as the consumer representative on the Financial Planning Association’s Government Relations Committee. His advocacy group, Fund Democracy, submitted an amicus brief in defense of a challenge to an SEC rule and comment letters on SEC releases regarding rules exempting brokers from regulation as investment advisers and from following investment advisers’ brokerage allocation practices. Since last summer, he has been quoted frequently in the press. On Oct. 5, he appeared on

CNBC to discuss the SEC’s rule requiring registration of hedge fund managers. His comments on a variety of securities-regulation issues have appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, Seattle Times, Newsday, Washington Post and Forbes.

Dean Samuel M. Davis, Jamie L. Whitten Chair of Law and Government, was selected for inclusion in the 60th edition of Who’s Who in America. He submitted the manuscript for the 2006 edition of his book Rights of Juveniles: The Juvenile Justice System. He has been appointed to serve another term on the board of directors of North Mississippi Rural Legal Services. He also continues to serve as vice president and a member of the board of directors of the Mississippi Children’s Justice Center and as a member of the board of directors of the Mississippi Equal Justice Foundation. He continues service as an elected member of the American Law Institute, a member of the Professionalism Committee of the Mississippi Bar and a member of the board of the Fellows of the Young Lawyers.

Professor Karen Green is serving a two-year appointment to Gov. Haley Barbour’s Judicial Appointments Advisory Committee. This committee provides the governor with advice on filling vacancies arising on the state Supreme Court, Court of Appeals, and Circuit and Chancery courts. She also assisted in the drafting of federal tax legislation allowing victims of Hurricane Katrina to obtain access to funds held in qualified retirement plans without the imposition of tax penalties and with special tax relief.

Visiting Professor Marc Harrold, counsel for national programs, saw his article “To Protect and Serve: The Struggle Between Community Policing and Enforcement of Immigration Laws” published in the September/October 2005 issue of Immigration Law Today.

Professor Michael Hoffheimer, Mississippi Defense Lawyers Association Distinguished Lecturer, published “The Rise and Fall of Lesser Included Offenses” in the latest issue of Rutgers Law Journal. The sequel, “The Future of Constitutionally Required Lesser Included Offenses,” will be published next year by University of Pittsburgh Law Review. Hoffheimer’s study of Indian legal films, “Bollywood Law,” appears in the next issue of Law Library Journal, and his review of the recent Indian hit “Veer-Zaara” appears in the online journal Picturing Justice.

Assistant Professor E. Farish Percy is the author of “Making a Federal Case of It: Removing Federal Cases to Civil Court Based on Fraudulent Joinder,” scheduled to appear in the Iowa Law Review in late 2005. A related article by Percy, “Defining the Contours of the Emerging Fraudulent Misjoinder Doctrine,” will appear in the March 2006 issue of the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy.

Percy recently chaired a committee that was responsible for drafting the insurance section of a manual designed to address many of the legal issues that have arisen in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. As part of the effort undertaken by the Young Lawyers Division of the Mississippi Bar to staff Federal Emergency Management Agency Disaster Recovery Centers with volunteer lawyers, Percy conducted the insurance portion of a training session for lawyers interested in volunteering.

Professor Ron Rychlak, associate dean, continues to serve as an adviser to the Holy See’s delegation to the United Nations. He is on the editorial board of the Gaming Law Review and is a member of the commission appointed by the Mississippi Supreme Court to revise the state’s criminal code. His new book, Righteous Gentiles: How Pope Pius XII Saved Half a Million Jews from the Nazis, was published in 2005 by Spence Publishing. He has published two articles this year: “From the Classroom to the Courtroom: Therapeutic Justice and the Gaming Industry’s Impact on Law” with C. Hinshaw in the Mississippi Law Journal, and “Legal Problems with Online Gambling” in the journal Engage.

In October, Rychlak published a book review, “A Righteous Gentile,” which was a look at David Dalin’s The Myth of Hitler’s Pope in Crisis. He also made presentations in October at the University of Arkansas, where he debated former First Minister of Scotland Henry McLeish on “The United States, Europe and the War in Iraq,” and at Syracuse University in September, where he presented “The International Criminal Court: An Obstacle to Peace?” He also spoke at Texas Tech law school in September on “Gambling in Texas: The Benefit and Cost of Casinos and Lotteries.”

Rychlak was featured Aug. 31 and Sept. 6 on MSNBC’s “The Abrams Report,” where he discussed reports of looting, price gouging and forced-evacuation laws following Hurricane Katrina. He participated in the event “Concepts of Peace and War in the Abrahamic Religions” in August in Oslo, Norway. In July, he spoke at the Southeastern Association of Law Schools conference on “Terrorism, Free Speech and Hate on the Internet.” He spoke at the Liberty Fund in Philadelphia, Pa., in June on “Liberty and Judicial Activism Worldwide.” In May, he spoke on “Scientific Evidence in the Courtroom” at a Mississippi Law Update in Natchez.

Assistant Professor Paul M. Secunda was appointed as a public arbitrator for the National Association of Security Dealers. He continues to act as a special education mediator, resolving special disputes between school districts and parents throughout Mississippi.

Secunda joined fellow faculty members Michael Waterstone, Kyle Duncan, Jack Nowlin and Ron Rychlak in a public discussion at the law school in October about the recent Supreme Court decisions in the Ten Commandments cases. The panel was co-sponsored by the school’s American Constitutional Society and the Federalist Society. He also assisted in drafting the Hurricane Katrina Legal Assistance Manual following the disaster. In particular, he edited and drafted sections dealing with employment, employee benefits and education issues for hurricane victims.

In June, Secunda presented “Ethical Considerations in Employment Law: Internal Corporate Investigations” at the Federal Procedure and Practice Seminar for the Mississippi Chapter of the Federal Bar Association in Jackson.

He has two law review articles due for publication in spring 2006: “‘Arasoi O Mizu Ni Nagasu’ or ‘Let the Dispute Flow to Water’: Pedagogical Methods for Teaching Arbitration Law in American and Japanese Law Schools” in the Ohio State Journal on Dispute Resolution and “Inherent Attorney Conflicts of Interest Under ERISA: Using the Model Rules of Professional Conduct to Discourage Joint Representation of Dual Role Fiduciaries” in the John Marshall Law Review as part of its Employee Benefit Symposium. He will present the latter paper in April at the John Marshall Law School in Chicago. His article “A Mosquito in the Ointment: Adverse HIPAA Implications for Health-Related Remote Sensing Research and a Reasonable Solution” was reprinted in the ICFAI Journal of Healthcare Law of Hyderabad, India, in August.

Visiting Professor Tim Waters is co-author of “Migrating towards Minority Status: Shifting European Policy towards Roma,” published in the Journal of Common Market Studies in 2005.

Assistant Professor Michael Waterstone wrote the article “The Untold Story of the Rest of the Americans with Disabilities Act,” which was published in the 2005 Vanderbilt Law Review, and another of his articles, “Lane, Fundamental Rights & Voting,” was published in the 2005 Alabama Law Review. He wrote a chapter titled “Political Participation for People with Disabilities” for the book Critical Perspectives on Human Rights (Brill Publishers, 2005).

Waterstone was an invited moderater at the Association of American Law Schools January 2005 conference “The Human Rights of People with Mental Disabilities: The Americans with Disabilities Act and Global Perspectives.” In October 2005, he was a moderator and panelist for the American Branch of the International Law Association’s program “Negotiating a U.N. Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities: Lessons and Observations.” His other speaking invitations include: “Restoring Balance to the ADA Debate” at the Southeastern Association of Law Schools Annual Meeting, Young Scholars Panel, July 2005; “Disability and Higher Education,” Oxford Round Table at St. Antony’s College at the University of Oxford’s Conference on Education Law, July 2005; “Racial Reconciliation and Civil Rights Murders” at the Southeast/Southwest People of Color Conference, May 2005; “Voting Accessibility,” Equal Access to Software and Information Online Conference, May 2005; “Re-opening Civil Rights Murders,” annual meeting, Southeastern Chapter of the American Association of Law Libraries, March 2005; “Southern Justice—Racial Reconciliation and the Civil Rights Movement,” University of Mississippi, February 2005.

Waterstone has been appointed as a commissioner of the American Bar Association Commission on Physical and Mental Disability. He also attended two sessions of the United Nations Ad Hoc Committee Meeting on a Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.