Michael Waterstone is the senior vice president and 18th dean of LMU Loyola Law School, Los Angeles. Waterstone's tenure began on June 1, 2016.
Waterstone is a nationally recognized expert in disability and civil rights law. His recent articles have appeared in the Harvard Law Review, Emory Law Review, Notre Dame Law Review, Minnesota Law Review, Duke Law Journal, Vanderbilt Law Review, William and Mary Law Review, and Northwestern Law Review, amongst others. He also is a co-author of a casebook on Disability Law.
He has consulted on projects for the National Council on Disability and testified before the United States Senate on issues related to voters with disabilities and older voters. Internationally, he has worked with foreign governments, non-governmental organizations, and academic institutions on disability rights laws in Israel, Japan, China, Bangladesh, Ireland, and Vietnam, amongst others. He is an associated colleague with the Harvard Law School Project on Disability, and in 2012, received a grant from the Japan Foundation to work on shared understandings of US and Japanese Disability Law. He is also on the Fulbright Specialist Roster and recently completed a project at the National University of Ireland in Galway.
Waterstone joined Loyola's faculty in the fall of 2006. From 2009-2014 he also served as Loyola's Associate Dean for Research and Academic Centers. In academic year 2014-2015, he was a visiting professor at Northwestern University School of Law, where the students selected him as the Outstanding First Year Professor. Prior to his tenure with Loyola Law School, he taught at the University of Mississippi Law School. He also worked as an associate in the Los Angeles law firm of Munger, Tolles, & Olson for three years. Following law school, Waterstone clerked for the Honorable Richard S. Arnold on the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit.
Waterstone was elected to the American Law Institute in 2012. He is also on the American Association of Law Schools Task Force on Professional Development, and is former president of the sections on Disability Law and Law & Mental Disability. Waterstone was a member of the California State Bar's Commission on Access and Fairness and a former Commissioner on the American Bar Association's Commission on Physical and Mental Disability.