Levin College of Law
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Hon. John L. Badalamenti

Peter T. Fay Jurist-in-Residence

Expertise

Federal Sentencing  • Originalism  • Statutory Interpretation  • Textualism  • 

About

John L. Badalamenti is a United States District Judge for the Middle District of Florida and a former judge on Florida’s Second District Court of Appeal. He earned a Bachelor of Arts in Criminology and Law with Highest Honors and a Master of Arts Degree in Sociology from the University of Florida, and a Juris Doctor with Honors from the University of Florida Fredric G. Levin College of Law, where he served on the Executive Editorial Board for the University of Florida Journal of Law and Public Policy and Director of its Juvenile Justice Symposium.

After law school, he accepted an appointment to the United States Attorney General’s Honors Program, serving as legal counsel to the Federal Bureau of Prisons. He then served as a law clerk to both the Honorable Frank Mays Hull and Paul H. Roney of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. Judge Badalamenti served for nearly a decade as an Assistant Federal Public Defender in Tampa, earning an AV-Preeminent® rating by Martindale-Hubbell in the areas of appellate practice and criminal law. He presented several oral arguments in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit and represented clients in all litigation stages in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida.

As an Assistant Federal Public Defender, Judge Badalamenti was counsel of record, authored the petition for writ of certiorari, and presented oral argument in the Supreme Court of the United States for the prevailing petitioner, a fisherman, who was charged under a criminal provision, 18 U.S.C. § 1519, of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 for destroying undersized fish to prevent their seizure by federal authorities.  See Yates v. United States, 135 S. Ct. 1074 (2015).

Judge Badalamenti previously served as Chair of the Florida Bar’s Federal Court Practice Committee and Vice Chair of the Florida Bar’s Standing Committee on Professionalism.  He has served on the faculty for legal education programs presented by the Federal Judicial Center, the Florida Bar, the Federal Bar Association, the American Bar Association, the Institute for Continuing Legal Education of Georgia, and various local bar associations. He currently serves on the Board of Directors of Gentlemen’s Quest, a not-for-profit organization which serves the academic and professional development needs of high school youth in the Tampa Bay community.

In his role as the Peter T. Fay Jurist-In-Residence starting in Fall 2023 semester, Judge Badalamenti will co-teach a seminar, Advanced Constitutional Theory: Originalism and its Foes. Working year-round from chambers, Judge Badalamenti will develop and facilitate student-focused programs, bringing distinguished federal and Florida state jurists together to expound upon Originalism and other methods of constitutional interpretation.  The Levin College of Law’s Inaugural Originalism Seminar will be held on October 24-25, 2024, at the Gainesville Campus. For additional information, please contact Co-Directors Hon. John Badalamenti and Interim Dean Merritt McAllister at: ruthm@law.ufl.edu or (352) 273-0864.

Education 

J.D., with Honors, University of Florida Levin College of Law
M.A., Sociology, University of Florida
B.A., with Highest Honors, Criminology and Law, University of Florida

Teaching and Scholarship

Adjunct Professor, University of Florida Levin College of Law

  • Advanced Constitutional Theory: Originalism and its Foes

Faculty & Instructor, Federal Judicial Center

  • Statutory Construction
  • Federal Sentencing Guidelines
  • Adam Walsh Act
  • Federal Bureau of Prisons Operations

Publications

Selected Publications 

  • John L. Badalamenti (with Lindsay Holcomb), Judicial Decision-Making, Routledge Handbook of Evidence-Based Crim. Just. Pract. (Edelyn Verona & Bryanna Fox, eds., forthcoming 2023)
  • John L. Badalamenti, “Respond” to Emails, Do Not Just “Reply” to Them, The Professional, Vol. XIV, No. 1 (The Henry Latimer Center for Professionalism, The Florida Bar) (Spring 2017)
  • John L. Badalamenti (with Gary L. Sasso), Circumventing Intent, Securities News, Litigation Section, American Bar Association, 12, No. 3 (2002)
  • John L. Badalamenti (with Charles W. Thomas, & Diane Bolinger), Private Adult Correctional Facility Census (10th 1997) (cited in Richardson v McKnight, 521 U.S. 399, 409 (1997))

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.