Levin College of Law
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Alyson Craig Flournoy

Emeritus Professor

CV

SSRN

bepress (SelectedWorks)

Mailing Address:
Box #117620 Gainesville, FL 32611

Phone:
(352) 273-0945

About

Professor Flournoy joined the Levin College of Law faculty in 1988. She served as Director of the Environmental and Land Use Law Program from its inception until 2011 when she began serving as Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, where she remained until 2015. She has taught courses in Environmental Law, Property and Administrative Law and has published book chapters and journal articles on environmental policy. Prior to her tenure at UF, Flournoy clerked for New Jersey Supreme Court Chief Justice Robert Wilentz and practiced with the firm of Covington & Burling in Washington, D.C., principally in the field of environmental law. Professor Flournoy received her J.D. with honors from Harvard Law School and her A.B. from Princeton University.

Professor Flournoy’s scholarship focuses on the design of legislation to protect natural resources, including decision-making processes under environmental and natural resource laws, and environmental ethics. She has addressed these themes in writings about endangered species and forest management, wetlands conservation and restoration, and regulation of toxic substances. Her most recent work focuses on law and policy responses to disasters and sea level rise, and the importance of identifying the values that are embedded in the nation’s environmental laws and policies.

She has written numerous articles on environmental and natural resources law topics, including several articles on wetlands regulation under the Clean Water Act. She is co-editor and a co-author of BEYOND ENVIRONMENTAL LAW: POLICY PROPOSALS FOR A BETTER ENVIRONMENTAL FUTURE (Cambridge Univ. Press 2010) which develops her proposal for a National Environmental Legacy Act. Flournoy is a trustee and past president of Florida Defenders of the Environment, a past chair of the Environmental Law Section of the Association of American Law Schools and a member scholar and trustee of the Center for Progressive Reform.

Education

J.D., Harvard Law School (cum laude)
A.B., Princeton University (cum laude)

Teaching and Scholarship

Environmental Law, Property, Administrative Law

Publications

Book Chapters

  • Incorporating Resilience and Innovation into Law and Policy: A case for preserving a natural resource legacy and promoting a sustainable future (with Tarsha Eason, Heriberto Cabezas and Michael Gonzalez) in Social-Ecological Resilience and Law (Ahjond S. Garmestani and Craig R. Allen, eds.) (Columbia Univ. Press 2014)
  • The Case for a National Environmental Legacy Act, in Beyond Environmental Law: Policy Proposals for a Better Environmental Future, David M. Driesen & Alyson C. Flournoy eds. (Cambridge Univ. Press 2010)
  • Following the Court Off-Road in SUWA, in Strategies for Environmental Success in an Uncertain Judicial Climate (Michael Allan Wolf ed.)(ELI 2005)

Articles

  • “Wetlands Regulation in an Era of Climate Change: Can Section 404 Meet the Challenge?” 4 G.W. J. Energy & Envtl L. 67 (2013)(co-authored with Allison Fischman) [SSRN]
  • “Three Meta-Lessons Government and Industry Should Learn from the BP Deepwater Horizon Disaster and Why They Won’t,” 38 B.C. Envtl. Aff. L. Rev. 281-303 (2011) [SSRN]
  • “Protecting a Natural Resource Legacy While Promoting Resilience: Can it Be Done?” 87 Neb. L. Rev. 1008-1035 (2009) [SSRN]

Miscellaneous

Co-authored Writings

  • Regulatory Blowout: How Regulatory Failures Made the BP Disaster Possible, and How the System Can Be Fixed to Avoid a Recurrence, Center for Progressive Reform White Paper #1007, available at: http://www.progressivereform.org/articles/BP_Reg_Blowout_1007.pdf (co-edited with James Goodwin and co-authored with William Andreen, Rebecca Bratspies, Holly Doremus, Victor Flatt, Robert Glicksman, James Goodwin, Joel Mintz, Daniel Rohlf, Amy Sinden, Rena Steinzor, Joseph Tomain, and Sandra Zellmer)(September 2010)
  • The Future of Environmental Protection: The Case for a National Environmental Legacy Act, A Center for Progressive Reform White Paper, available at: http://www.progressivereform.org/articles/NELA_1002.pdf (co-authored with Ryan Feinberg, Margaret Clune Giblin, Heather Halter, and Christina Storz) (January 2010)
  • Squandering Public Resources: A Center for Progressive Reform Report (with Margaret Clune Giblin and Matt Shudtz) (September 2007)
  • An Unnatural Disaster: The Aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, (coordinated and edited work of 16 other member scholars of the Center for Progressive Reform) (September 2005).

University of Florida Levin College of Law
309 Village Drive
PO Box 117620
Gainesville, FL 32611
(352) 273-0804
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The Florida Constitutional Law Endowment in memory of Justice Ben F. Overton was created by Judge Karen Miller in 2013. This fund supports lectures and presentations by Justices of the Florida Supreme Court at the Fredric G. Levin College of Law.

HISTORY

Justice Overton, who earned his B.S. in 1951 and his Juris Doctor in 1952 from the University of Florida, was the first merit appointment to the Florida Supreme Court. Throughout his career he was active in legal education and served as an Adjunct Professor at the Levin College of Law through December 2012, the month of his death. Although he resided at Oak Hammock at the University of Florida, a continuing care retirement community developed in cooperation with UF, he also considered the Florida Supreme Court “home.” Among the high points of his later years was hosting Justices of the Florida Supreme Court in Gainesville and taking his class to Tallahassee to hear oral arguments at the Florida Supreme Court.
Judge Miller, who earned her B.S. cum laude from New York University in 1974 and her Juris Doctor from New York Law School in 1977, served as Chief Administrative Law Judge of the New York City Department of Consumer Affairs, New York City’s business regulatory agency, before she retired to Oak Hammock at the University of Florida. Having accompanied Justice Overton on his excursions to Tallahassee and joined him in welcoming guests to Oak Hammock at the University of Florida, she created the endowment in memory of Justice Overton to ensure that the Levin College of Law continues to have the funding necessary to continue and enhance the interaction between its students and the Florida Supreme Court.

 

Judge Miller remembered the event that motivated the endowment.

 

Prior to a dinner at the home of Dean Robert Jerry and Lisa Jerry shortly after Justice Overton’s death, Justice Barbara Pariente and I were discussing a suitable memorial. Justice Pariente, who had been Justice Overton’s colleague on the Florida Supreme Court and who understood the importance to him of the interaction between his students and the Court, suggested the outline of what has become the Overton lectures. Dean Jerry, who has since retired, as has Dean Emeritus Jon Mills, who assumed responsibility for implementing the Overton lectures, were very supportive from the beginning. Since Dean Mills’ retirement, Professor Timothy McClendon, who assisted both Justice Overton and Dean Mills teaching Florida Constitutional Law and who co-authored the recent Florida Constitutional Law casebook, has continued the Overton lectures with the support of Interim Dean Merritt McAlister and CGR director, Professor Danaya Wright.

Justice Overton was a devoted jurist, educator, and ethical leader of the Florida legal profession. The Overton Lecture Series brings Florida Supreme Court Justices to the University of Florida, Levin College of Law, and serves to introduce students to the inner workings of the Court. CGR and the students of the College of Law extend our deepest gratitude to Judge Karen Miller for making the Overton Lectures possible in perpetuity.

You can watch an interview for the Florida Historical Society by Mary Adkins, professor emeritus of the UF Levin College of Law, with Justice Overton here.

Justice Overton was also interviewed for the Samuel Proctor Oral History Project and a transcript of his interview is available at the Smathers Library, and here.
Justice Overton sat on the Constitution Revision Commission of 1977-78 that proposed a right to privacy in the Florida Constitution. Although it failed as part of the Constitution Revision Commission recommendations, it passed in 1980 when proposed by the legislature. The bill was co-sponsored by our very own Jon Mills. The privacy provision prevailed by greater than 60%. Justice Overton then wrote a concurrence in a critical reproductive rights case in 1989 affirming that the privacy provision of the Florida Constitution included the right to obtain an abortion. That decision was overruled in Planned Parenthood of SW and Central Florida v. Florida. You can read about the role of Justice Overton, Jon Mills – director emeritus of CGR, and the history of the 1989 case here.