Several years after he began work as an associate at Munger, Tolles & Olson, a white-shoe law firm in downtown Los Angeles, Michael Waterstone decided that he wanted to make the transition to teaching, where he could also write and think broadly about social justice issues.
Already interested in civil rights law — specifically how it relates to people with disabilities — the Harvard Law School graduate who clerked for the late judge Richard S. Arnold in Little Rock, Arkansas straight out of law school, eventually received several teaching offers before settling on a position as an assistant law professor at the University of Mississippi.
“My wife and I spent three very happy years in Oxford, Mississippi,” says Waterstone.
“Amongst other things, I taught civil rights and that was just an amazing experience teaching a civil rights course there,” he adds, noting that his tenure on the faculty at Ole Miss coincided with the retrial of Ku Klux Klan member Edgar Ray Killen.
In 2005, Killen was found guilty of orchestrating the murders of civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner in 1964.
“I was in the courthouse. I went with students and that was just a fascinating sense of history to be around,” says Waterstone.
After spending three years on the University of Mississippi law school faculty, Waterstone and his wife—who also taught in a clinical program at the law school focused on juvenile justice issues—decided to head back to Southern California to be closer to family.
