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Rosenbury named UF Law Dean

April 27, 2015 — The University of Florida has announced the appointment of Laura Ann Rosenbury as dean of the Levin College of Law. Effective July 1, she becomes the first female permanent dean in the law school’s 106-year history.

A professor at Washington University Law School in St. Louis, since 2002, Rosenbury served as vice dean for research and faculty development from 2010-12. She was the John S. Lehmann Research Professor in 2013-14 and has been a member of the Association of American Law Schools Membership Review Committee since 2014.

“Laura Rosenbury’s outstanding scholarship and breadth of experience in administration made her the ideal candidate to lead the Levin College of Law,” said Provost Joe Glover, University of Florida’s senior vice president for academic affairs. “We have great confidence in the college’s future under her leadership.”

Rosenbury’s research and teaching focus on feminist legal theory, family law, employment discrimination, property and trusts and estates. A recipient of Washington University’s David M. Becker Professor of the Year Award, Rosenbury has served on the advisory board of the law school’s Center for the Interdisciplinary Study of Work and Social Capital and holds an appointment as an affiliated faculty member with Washington University’s Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies Program in Arts & Sciences.

A committee of faculty, students and administrators chose nine candidates to interview for the dean position following a nationwide search. Four finalists selected from the candidate pool interviewed with UF President Kent Fuchs, Glover and law school faculty and attended a series of forums for faculty, staff, alumni and law students.

“I am excited to collaborate with faculty, students, staff and the college’s loyal alumni network to maximize UF’s potential,” Rosenbury said. “Building upon the faculty’s recent strategic planning process, we will make UF the leader in developing innovative responses to the changing legal services market.”

Rosenbury said UF Law can keep up with a rapidly changing legal profession by bringing alumni and other practicing professionals into the classroom. She also advocated expanding multidisciplinary work by faculty and students.

“We must have real-time knowledge of changes in the legal profession if we are to appropriately respond to them,” Rosenbury told faculty and alumni during a forum at UF Law.

Rosenbury earned a law degree in 1997 from Harvard Law School, where she was primary editor for the Harvard Law Review. She earned a bachelor’s degree in women’s studies in 1992 from Harvard-Radcliffe College.

In addition to teaching at Washington University, Rosenbury has been a visiting professor of law at Harvard Law School, University of Chicago Law School and Stanford Law School. She also has taught short courses at University of Illinois College of Law and University of California, Los Angeles School of Law.

Interim UF Law Dean George Dawson called her a strong leader for the college of law.

“She is an outstanding scholar and has visited at some of the most prestigious law schools in the United States,” Dawson said. “She will provide strong leadership as the college continues to advance.”

Before embarking on her academic career, Rosenbury clerked for two federal judges and practiced law at Davis Polk & Wardwell in New York City where she defended white-collar criminal cases. While at Davis Polk she also taught classes as an adjunct associate professor of law at Fordham University School of Law.

Rosenbury succeeds Robert Jerry II, who stepped down as dean in June after serving in that position for 11 years.

UF Law is ranked as Florida’s No. 1 law school by U.S. News and World Report. U.S. News ranked UF Law 24th among public law schools and tied for 47th overall. It ranked UF Law’s Graduate Tax Program first among publics and tied with Georgetown for second overall, while the Environmental and Land Use Law Program was ranked seventh among publics and 16th overall.

Contact:
Donna Winchester, UF Strategic Communications Director
352-846-3903, dwinchester@ufl.edu

 

Published: April 27th, 2015

Category: News

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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.