News Release

Two new full-time faculty members will be joining Southwestern this fall. David Fagundes has been appointed as Associate Professor of Law. He will initially teach courses in Copyright and Property. Julie K. Waterstone has been appointed as Associate Clinical Professor of Law. She will help develop and direct the new Children's Rights Clinic.

"Both bring outstanding academic and professional credentials as well as tremendous enthusiasm for teaching and research," Dean Garth said. "They are great bets to be future leaders of their fields."

Professor Fagundes earned his A.B. degree in History, summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, in 1996 from Harvard where he received the Philip Washburn Prize for best senior history thesis, the William Scott Ferguson Award for best sophomore essay, and the Department of History Award for best overall record as a history concentrator. For law school, he remained at Harvard where he served as an articles editor of the Harvard Law Review and earned his J.D. degree, cum laude, in 2001. Originally from Southern California, he worked in the Los Angeles offices of Munger, Tolles & Olson; Irell & Manella; and Sheppard Mullin Richter & Hampton as a summer associate while a law student, and is a member of the California State Bar.

After law school, Professor Fagundes clerked for Judge David S. Tatel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, and then worked as an associate at Jenner & Block LLP for two years in Washington, D.C. His time in Washington included a leave from practice to be a Visiting Research Fellow at Georgetown University Law Center. In 2005, Professor Fagundes joined the University of Chicago Law School as a Bigelow Fellow and Lecturer in Law. During his two years there, he taught legal research and writing while developing his own scholarship, including "State Actors as First Amendment Speakers," an article recently published in the Northwestern University Law Review.

Professor Fagundes' research and teaching interests cover a variety of property law issues, including copyright, real property and land use. His current research concerns the relationship between tangible and intangible property, and in particular whether rules governing physical property can provide a template for thinking about intellectual property as well.

"The notion of property is ancient, but it has undergone profound changes in recent years," he said. "Examining different subject matter - real estate, chattels, copyrights, or patents - forces us to ask foundational questions about what property is, both as a social institution and a legal idea."

Professor Waterstone earned her B.A. degree in Law and Society with honors in 1995 at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She completed her J.D. degree in 2000 at Northwestern University School of Law where she was first exposed to child advocacy as a law student working with children in the delinquency system through the Children and Family Justice Center of Northwestern's Bluhm Legal Clinic.

After graduation, Professor Waterstone served as a civil litigator and handled some pro bono cases at Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy in Los Angeles for three years. She then wanted to pursue public interest law full time and accepted a position with the Civil Legal Clinic at the University of Mississippi School of Law where as a clinical professor, she created and developed the Child Advocacy Clinic, supervised students and taught the accompanying clinic seminar. Three years later, she once again returned to Los Angeles where she joined Public Counsel as a staff attorney, litigating special education cases and training lawyers and law students as pro bono special education advocates.

At Southwestern, Professor Waterstone will have the opportunity to apply her skills and knowledge while directing and teaching in the law school's new Children's Rights Clinic. She will work with approximately eight students each semester on a variety of legal issues that best suit the needs of the community's youth and at the same time provide valuable experiences for the law students. She will help create and develop a program that she hopes "will ignite in students the same fire for public interest law and pro bono work."

A member of the California and Mississippi State Bars, Professor Waterstone maintains an active role in the community and has served on a number of boards, including the Executive Board of the Mississippi chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, the Advisory Board of the Southern Juvenile Defender Center, and the Legal Advisory Committee of the Anti-Defamation League of Los Angeles.