Gordon Joins Law Faculty, Argues Case Before U.S. Supreme Court

Michael D. Gordon chose to study law because he "wanted to help people"- one of whom he has represented all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Joining the Law School faculty last fall, Gordon brought with him from his former legal practice the case United States v. Martinez-Salazar, which he argued before the country's highest court in November. The issue before the court, with a decision yet to be made, is whether an erroneous denial of a for-cause challenge that forces a criminal defendant to use a peremptory challenge violates a criminal defendant's constitutional rights.

Gordon graduated first in his class from the University of Arizona College of Law, and holds a degree in political science from Arizona State University. Following a clerkship in the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona, he practiced law for 18 months with the Phoenix firm Lewis & Roca. He then served as an assistant public defender in Phoenix, representing clients during all aspects of federal criminal defense, including trial work, motion practice and appeals before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court.

Following some 10 years of practicing law, Gordon said he chose teaching as a way to "further his commitment of service." He was a visiting professor for a year at the Arizona State University College of Law before joining the Ole Miss Law School this fall semester. He teaches criminal law, criminal procedure and directs the Law School Clinic.

Gordon says he was especially interested in locating to Oxford because he likes the South and "the University of Mississippi has a long tradition of being a place to learn."

Professor Guthrie Abbott is serving as immediate past president of the Mississippi Bar Association and as a member of the Executive Committee of Mississippi Board of Bar Commissioners. He is vice chair of the Mississippi Supreme Court Advisory Committee on Rules and member of the awards committee of the Mississippi Bar Foundation.

Assistant Professor Ari Afilalo presented the paper "Toward a `Common Law' of Europe: Effective Judicial Protection, National Procedural Autonomy and Standing to Litigate Diffuse Social Interests in the European Union." The paper has been published in the fall issue of the Suffolk Transnational Law Review.

Professor John R. Bradley spoke at the Mississippi Workers' Compensation Educational Conference on the topic "Mississippi Workers' Compensation at Age 50: New Developments at Middle Age." He presented "The Law of Benefits: Blowing in the New Wind of Low Unemployment and Political Change" at the 12th Annual Workers' Compensation Practice & Procedure Conference.

Professor Larry Bush was a visiting professor at Cornell Law School last year. His article, "Romanian Regulation of Trade Unions and Collective Bargaining," was published this fall in the Cornell International Law Journal. He has authored a chapter on trade unions for a Westview Press publication, Politics and Society in Post-Communist Romania, due to be published next year. This fall he developed an exploratory partnership for the Law School's English summer law program, Cambridge Summer Session 2000, with the law schools at the University of Arkansas-Fayetteville and the University of Tennessee. He also was re-elected to the board of directors of the Mississippi ACLU and currently serves on its executive committee.

Assistant Professor John Czarnetzky published the following: "Time, Uncertainty and the Law of Corporate Reorganizations," 47 Fordham Law Review 2939, May 1999; "The Individual and Failure: A Theory of the Bankruptcy Discharge," forthcoming Arizona State Law Review, May 2000; and "Bankruptcy for Beginners," Mississippi Lawyer Magazine. He also spoke at the Mississippi Bankruptcy Conference Seminar in Jackson on the topic "Current Developments in Bankruptcy Law."

Professor Robert N. Davis was a member of the January-October 1999 Presidential Selective Recall to Active Duty, Bosnia, Operation Joint Forge, SFOR/NATO Implementationof Dayton Peace Accords. He initially was assigned as Compliance Assessment Team Chief (CAT), United States National Intelligence Cell, Sarajevo, Bosnia. He investigated criminal linkages between the military, government and organized crime, as the Officer in Charge, Document Exploitation Mission at Task Force Eagle, Tuzla, Bosnia. As OIC of the SFOR/NATO Document Exploitation Section of the Combined Joint Intelligence Directorate, Davis established the Theater Document Exploitation Section at

Headquarters, Stabilization Force, Sarajevo, Bosnia, after first establishing the MND(N) facility from ground zero. During peak work load, he managed 25 people in three sections and established "Go Teams" to help acquire material. He led several missions into hostile territory. The work force included contractors, NATO representatives and all branches of the U.S. military, and it required coordination with the National Intelligence Support Team. Davis received the NATO medal, Armed Forces Expeditionary Medal and the Joint Service Commendation Medal.

Davis has been appointed to the ABA Standing Committee on Law and National Security, and he published an article in the ABA Newsletter on Foreign Policy in Bosnia.

Professor Tim Hall is the editor for Magill's Legal Guide, published by Salem press in September, 1999. Magill's Legal Guide is an extensive compendium of articles about the law and the legal systems of the United States that defines basic legal concepts and offers a practical guide to the law's impact on day-to-day life. Hall signed a contract this summer with the New York publishing company, Facts on File, to write a reference volume of biographers of all the 108 justices who have served on the United State Supreme Court. He is presently working on this project, which is scheduled for completion in August. The book will be published in 2001.

In addition to his scholarly and teaching work, Professor Hall is serving on two University committees, a planning committee for the structure of the Trent Lott Leadership Institute on the Oxford campus, and a planning committee for the implementation of a freshman seminar for all entering students at the University.

Professor Michael H. Hoffheimer, the Mississippi Defense Lawyers Association Lecturer, has published biographical entries on Fred Rodell (legal scholar), Emlin McClain (legal scholar), Fritz Lang (film director), Nathan Milstein (violinist), Bob Wills (fiddler) and Josh White (blues guitarist) in American National Biography (Oxford, 1999). His article "Baptism and Law in the Young Hegel" was published in a recent issue of Clio, and an article on Hegel's philosophy of slavery will be published in Hegel-Studien. His essay "Observing Capital Punishment in Arnold Bennett's The Old Wives' Tale" will appear in the Mississippi Law Journal. Hoffheimer also has book reviews appearing in upcoming issues of Clio and Journal of American Legal History. His Directory of Law Reviews (reprinted in hard copy for 1999) is continuously updated on the Internet.

Director of Legal Writing and Acting Assistant Professor Susan P. Liemer became president of the Association of Legal Writing Directors in August, after serving for a year as ALWD acting president. She was recently approved for membership in Scribes, the American Society of Writers on Legal Subjects.

Liemer has given the following presentations: "Balancing Career and Family," a faculty-alumni forum panel, held at Princeton University in May; "The New Director Blues," presented at ALWD's bi-annual conference, held at the New England School of Law in Boston, in July; "Teaching Memo Structure," presented at the Central Region LRW/Lawyering Skills Conference, held at the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law in September; "The Visual Artists Rights Act of 1990," faculty brown bag luncheon, presented at the Law School for the faculty in April; and "The Civil Law Origins of Artists' Moral Rights," faculty luncheon colloquium, presented at Louisiana State University Law Center in October.

Professor Gary Myers completed the article "StatutoryInterpretation, Property Rights, and Boundaries: The Nature and Limits of Protection in Trademark Dilution, Trade Dress, and Product Configuration Cases," for publication in Columbia-VLA Journal of Law & the Arts (forthcoming Spring 2000). He presented this paper at a faculty colloquim at the College of William & Mary in October. His casebook coauthors and he also have submitted a final manuscript to West Publishing Company for their Teacher's Manual for Intellectual Property: Cases and Materials (forthcoming February 2000).

Associate Dean and Professor Ron Rychlak published: "Pete Rose, Bart Giamatti, and the Dowd Report," 68 Mississippi Law Journal 889 (1999); "Videotape and Casino Lawsuits," 4 Gaming Law Rev. 241 (1999); "Nothing is Ever Anybody's Fault: Do We Choose to Act or are We Merely Conditioned?," This Rock, October 1999; "The Selling of a Myth," Inside the Vatican, Oct. 1999; and "Cornwell's Errors: Reviewing Hitler's Pope," Catalyst, December, 1999. He continues his work on Hitler, the War, and the Pope (Publication by Genisis Press expected in June 2000).

Rychlak's other activities include: participated in the Liberty Fund event The Supreme Court on Trial, Crawfordsville, Ind., in October; prepared and served as second chair (to Assistant Professor Michael D. Gordon) for United States v. Abel Martinez-Salazar, argued to the U.S. Supreme Court in November; traveled to Rome at the invitation of the Vatican to conduct research and have meetings with officials regarding the Vatican and World War II; was interviewed on ABC's 20/20 for commentary on a 1960s Mississippi murder case; and was interviewed on EWTN Television Network for a special program on the Vatican and World War II.

Afilalo Leaves Life in Big Apple to Join Law School, Croft Institute

A joint appointment with the School of Law and the Croft Institute for International Studies brought Ari Afilalo to the Oxford campus this fall semester.

In addition to fulfilling his dream of becoming a law professor, Afilalo said he "was very attracted by the Croft Institute, the opportunity to be part of a cross disciplinary community of internationally oriented scholars."

A graduate of Boston University School of Law, Afilalo had practiced law for several years with the firm Kornish, Leib, Weiner and Hellman in New York City. He focused on cross-border commercial and financial transactions between Europe and the United States and on intellectual property matters.

"Teaching has always been my goal," he said. "It's the best profession in the world. I get to do exactly what I like most professionally: learning, thinking, writing, passing on knowledge. I wanted to practice for a while before I taught to get real world experience that I could pass on to my students."

While practicing law, Afilalo taught courses in international trade and intellectual property as an adjunct professor at Suffolk Law School in Boston. He served as a legal writing instructor for foreign graduate students at Harvard Law School, where he received his LL.M. He also spent time as a law clerk to Chief Justice Paul J. Liacos of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts.

Afilalo's scholarly interests include the treatment of intellectual property in free trade areas, the law governing the elimination of non-tariff barriers to trade, the European Union's system of judicial remedies and the relationship between domestic and international legal systems.

Afilalo and his wife, Gilda Sedgh, are the parents of a 5-year-old daughter, Maya, "the center of my existence," he says. He also enjoys basketball, soccer, reading and coaching kids in sports.

1960s Civil Rights Attorney in Mississippi Is Visiting Professor of Law this Spring

As a trial lawyer with the civil rights division of Robert Kennedy's Justice Department, Gordon A. Martin Jr. spent much of 1962 and 1963 in Mississippi preparing the state's first voting rights case and working in 44 counties. From his justice department vantage point, he also had a front-row view of the integration of The University of Mississippi.

All these years later, Martin is reconnecting with the state as a visiting professor of law at Ole Miss this spring semester. He also plans to continue work on a book about the people with whom he collaborated in the historic first government law suit in Mississippi, which was against the circuit clerk of Forrest County.

Upon getting the assignment in 1961 when he was a young lawyer, two years out of New York University Law School, Martin said, "I viewed it as the most compelling problem that existed in the country, the denial of African Americans to have the right to vote."

Now a District Court judge in Massachusetts, Martin, 65, also worked as an assistant U.S. attorney and ran a private law practice in Boston. He is an adjunct professor at the New England School of Law, and he taught at Northeastern University School of Law from 1968-70. During a 1991-92 foray into academe, he taught at Tulane University in New Orleans and the University of San Diego.

The former civil rights attorney made his first trek back to the state in 1989, and on several occasions during his tenure at Tulane. "I've been back periodically in the last decade to talk to people like our witnesses, the woman who succeeded the circuit clerk, the judges who decided the case on appeal," he said. "I'm putting together all the information I have gathered (for the book), and I'm trying to figure out what would interest the public. For example, our first witness, Jesse Stegall, who grew up in Laurel, was in the same class with Leontyne Price, the great singer."

One of his most moving experiences since the trial, he said, came in 1989 when he started going to the homes of the witnesses who hadn't seen him since 1963. "Willie Thigpen worked for the Hercules Powder Company. I said to him: `Was it worth doing? Was it worth the danger you put yourself in by going back and forth to the registrar in 1963?' And he said, `Oh, was it? Was it ever? Back then when I was in line at a store, I had to step aside so the white man could be served. Now when I'm in a store I take my place like anybody else, and when I get to the head of the line, they don't call me boy, they call me Mr. Thigpen.'

"You think about it, and it's almost enough to make you cry," said Martin, adding, "They were just some terrific people, some who are no longer living, like Vernon Dahmer, who was murdered in the 1966 firebombing for which Sam Bowers has just been sent to prison."

While living in Oxford, which he says he and his wife are enjoying, Martin said he will "be reading, on a regular basis, two people I admire greatly - Bill Minor, the terrific political columnist of The Clarion-Ledger, and Jerry Mitchell, whom I consider unexcelled as an investigative reporter."

At the Ole Miss law school, Martin is teaching courses in legal ethics and civil rights. For the latter, he is using the casebook he co-authored titled Civil Rights Litigation: Cases and Perspectives, which is in use at some 25 law schools around the country. The book is supplemented to stay current, he said. "One thing about civil rights is that it is ever changing ...often changing by one vote of the Supreme Court - five to four - as so many decisions have been."

Reflecting on his role to help effect change in Mississippi, Martin said, "I believe our work helped lead to the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965. It meant that blacks could no longer be ignored by politicians and that the days of Theodore Bilbo would never recur. And that's why Mississippi and Alabama are the two states that have more black officeholders than any other states. Obviously, you have intense competition for political office. It means everybody can compete, and when Governor Musgrove is looking for an appointment he will consider a black man or woman just the same as he will consider a white man or woman."

In 1963 Martin filled another assignment in the South. On loan from the Justice Department to Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, he was the only non-military person on a task force investigating discrimination against blacks and their dependents on Southern air bases, Keesler, Biloxi, Barksdale, Shreveport, Greenville and Columbus.