David Case
Professor of Law and Mississippi Defense Lawyers Association Distinguished Lecturer
Dr. David W. Case is a Professor of Law and the Butler, Snow, O'Mara, Stevens & Cannada Lecturer in Law at the University of Mississippi School of Law. He regularly teaches Property, Contracts, Contract Negotiation and Drafting, Civil Procedure, Administrative Law and Environmental Law in the law school.
Research Interests
- Mississippi Real Property
- Environmental Regulation and Management
Biography
Professor Case joined the University of Mississippi School of Law faculty in 2007. He was previously a law professor on the faculty of the University of Memphis School of Law (2001-07) and a Bridgestone Americas Fellow in Environmental Management at Vanderbilt University and a senior research associate with the Vanderbilt Center for Environmental Management Studies (1998-2001). Professor Case is a graduate of Vanderbilt University (Ph.D), Columbia University (LL.M.), and the University of Mississippi (B.A., J.D.). As a student at Ole Miss Law, he was on the executive editorial board of the Mississippi Law Journal, served as chair of the Honor Council, and was selected for membership in the honor society of Phi Kappa Phi. Professor Case has been a member of the Mississippi Bar since 1988 and has continuously served as a member of the Mississippi Supreme Court Advisory Committee on Rules since 2017. In 2019, he was named one of “Mississippi’s Leading Attorneys” by the Mississippi Business Journal. Prior to his academic career, Professor Case was a federal judicial clerk for the Honorable Rhesa H. Barksdale of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit (1991-92) and the Honorable James C. Sumner of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi (1993-94). He was also a partner in the Jackson, Mississippi law firm of Ott & Purdy and prior to that an attorney in the Civil Division (Commercial Litigation Branch) of the United States Department of Justice in Washington, D.C.
Professor Case is the author of Mississippi Real Property Law and Practice, an annually updated legal treatise published by LexisNexis and Matthew Bender & Company. He co-authored Environmental Law with colleague Ron Rychlak, part of the Legal Almanac Series: Thomson Reuters’ Law for the Layperson (republished by West Publishing following original publication by Oxford University Press). Professor Case has published numerous scholarly articles, book chapters, and essays, and his legal scholarship has appeared in the Duke Environmental Law & Policy Forum, the Emory Law Journal, the Environmental Law Reporter, the Mississippi College Law Review, the Mississippi Law Journal, the University of Colorado Law Review, the University of Memphis Law Review, the Washington & Lee Law Review, and the William & Mary Environmental Law & Policy Review. He is a previous winner of the Ben A. Hardy Faculty Excellence Award in recognition of outstanding teaching, scholarship, and service by a faculty member of the University of Mississippi School of Law. For two decades, Professor Case coached teams in the National Environmental Law Moot Court Competition in White Plains, New York. His Ole Miss Law teams won five championships at the NELMCC (in 2011, 2012, 2014, 2015, and 2016). After “retiring” from moot court coaching, he published an article recounting his experiences – A Pedagogical Rationale for the Law Professor as Moot Court Coach – in the Mississippi Law Journal.
Professor Case met his wife Catherine Featherstone Case when they were both first-year students at Ole Miss Law. Between the two of them and their four children – Veronica, Jane Costner, Sarah Catherine, and Sam – the Case family has earned 12 degrees from the University of Mississippi. Professor Case is a Life Member of the University of Mississippi Alumni Association, a member of the Lamar Order of the alumni association’s Law Alumni Chapter, and has continuously served as a member of the university Chancellor’s Standing Committee on Intercollegiate Athletics since joining the faculty in 2007.
Education
B.A. English, The University of Mississippi (1985)
J.D. Law, The University of Mississippi (1988)
LLM Law, Columbia University (1993)
Ph.D. Management, Vanderbilt University (2004)