Melissa A. Waters
Visiting Professor of Law - Fall 2007
296 Faculty Suite
Voice: 615-322-2758
Email: melissa.waters@vanderbilt.edu
Curriculum vitae
SSRN Page
Education
J.D. Yale Law School
B.A. Yale College
Research Interests
Foreign relations law, international law, international human rights law and international criminal law, comparative law, conflicts of law, civil procedure and complex civil litigation
Biography
Melissa Waters is visiting Vanderbilt Law School during the Fall 2007 semester from the Washington and Lee School of Law, where she is an assistant professor. Her scholarly work focuses on the incorporation of international law into domestic legal regimes, and in particular on the role of transnational judicial dialog in developing international legal norms and in transforming U.S. and other domestic courts into key mediators between domestic and international law. She has written extensively on the debate in Congress and in the media over the use of foreign and international law in interpreting the U.S. Constitution. Professor Waters' articles have been published in the Columbia, Georgetown, and North Carolina law reviews, in the Yale Journal of International Law, and in numerous edited volumes and symposium collections. In 2006, her work was one of three U.S. entries selected by the American Society of International Law (through a peer reviewed process) for presentation at the inaugural Four Societies Symposium (a joint symposium of the American, Australia/New Zealand, Canadian, and Japanese Societies of International Law). Her scholarship on transnational judicial dialog has been cited by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. Prior to entering law teaching, Professor Waters served in the U.S. State Department as Senior Advisor to Harold Hongju Koh, Asisstant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights & Labor. She was a litigator at Williams & Connolly in Washington, DC, where she was a member of President Clinton's legal defense team. She has also served as a consultant to the Soros Foundation Open Society Institute, specializing in the design, development and implementation of rule of law and human rights capacity building projects. A proud native of Elm Springs, Arkansas, Professor Waters was a law clerk to the Honorable Morris S. Arnold of the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals in Little Rock. In addition to her scholarly work, Professor Waters specializes in developing and conducting human rights and rule of law training programs for legal professionals in transitional democracies, most recently partnering with the International Bar Association and ABA/CEELI to train judges and government officials from Iraq and Central Asia.
Representative Publications
"Normativity in the 'New' Schools: Assessing the Legitimacy of International Legal Norms Created by Domestic Courts," 32 Yale Journal of International Law 455 (2007)
"Creeping Monism: The Judicial Trend Toward Interpretive Incorporation of Human Rights Treaties," 107 Columbia Law Review 628 (2007)
"Mediating Norms and Identity: The Role of Transnational Judicial Dialogue in Creating and Enforcing International Law," 93 Georgetown Law Journal 487 (2005)
"Common Law Courts in an Age of Equity Procedure: Redefining Appellate Review for the Mass Tort Era," 80 North Carolina Law Review 527 (2002)
"Transnational Judicial Dialogue and Transnational Speech: International Jurisdictional Conflicts in Hate Speech and Defamation Law" in Progress in International Organization (Miller & Bratspies, eds., Martinus Nijhoff) (forthcoming 2007).
"The Attitudes of U.S. Courts Towards International Courts and Tribunals: Is Sanchez-Llamas a Model for Transnational Dialogue?" in The United States and International Courts and Tribunals (Romano, ed.) (forthcoming 2007)
