Levin College of Law
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Sharon Elizabeth Rush

Emeritus Professor

CV

SSRN

bepress (SelectedWorks)

Mailing Address:
Box #117625 Gainesville, FL 32611

Phone:
(352) 273-0948

About

Sharon E. Rush teaches constitutional law and federal courts. She practiced law at the firm of Cadwalader, Wickersham and Taft before joining the faculty at DePaul University in Chicago where she taught for two years prior to joining the Florida faculty. Prof. Rush is an expert on separation of powers, federalism, children’s rights, equal protection, due process, and race relations. She co-founded the Center for the Study of Race and Race Relations, one of a few law school centers that focuses on race. She is the author of Loving Across the Color Line: A White Adoptive Mother Learns About Race (2000), which was nominated for an NAACP Image Award, and Huck Finn’s “Hidden” Lessons: Teaching and Learning Across the Color Line (2006). Her articles have been published in law reviews and journals at many of the top law schools and she also has contributed numerous chapters to books published by acclaimed academic presses such as Vanderbilt University, New York University, Cornell University, North Carolina Press, and Oxford University.

Prof. Rush achieved the honor of being cited by the U.S. Supreme Court in Ankenbrandt v. Richards, Inc. 504 U.S. 689 (1992), a case that raised questions about the scope of the domestic relations exception to federal jurisdiction. Professor Rush’s teaching influence extends around the world to South Africa, Poland, Germany, Mexico, and France and she has been a visiting professor at several law schools, including Cornell University, her alma mater. She also has received several Outstanding Teaching Awards. Prof. Rush’s current research projects focus on the relationship between group political power and an individual’s right to equal protection.

Education

J.D., Cornell University (cum laude)
B.A., Cornell University

Teaching and Scholarship

Civil Procedure, Comparative Civil Rights, Constitutional Law, Federal Courts, Fourteenth Amendment, Children’s Rights.

Publications

Books

  • Political Power and Equal Protection: The Role of the Court (research stage)
  • Huck Finn’s Hidden Lessons: Teaching and Learning Across the Color Line (Roman & Littlefield, 2006)
  • Loving Across the Color Line; A White Adoptive Mother Learns about Race (Rowman & Littlefield, 2000) (Nominated for NAACP Image Award)
  • Feminist Jurisprudence, Women and the Law: Research Essays and Bibliography (Rothman Press, 1998) (eds. with B. Taylor & R. Munro)

Book Chapters

  • ”Miscegenation” in Encyclopedia of Family Studies (Constance Shehan, ed.) (Wiley-Blackwell, 2015)
  • “Doing Anti-racism: Toward an Egalitarian American Society,” in Race, Gender, Sexuality, and Social Class: Dimensions of Inequality (S.J. Ferguson, ed.) (Sage Pub., 2015) (with Joe Feagin and Jacqueline Johnson)(reprinted from 29(1) Contemporary Sociology 95 (2000)) (Note: also published in the 2012 edition)
  • ”The Town/Gown Relationship: Duke, Durham, and Dignity,” in Race to Injustice (Michael Seigel, ed., North Carolina Press, 2009) pp. 55-77
  • ”Toto, I Have A Feeling We Are Still in Kansas,” in Law Touched Our Hearts (M. Robinson and R. Bonnie, ed., Vanderbilt University Press, 2009) pp. 43-49

Articles

  • “Equal Protection and Federalism: A Strange Marriage?” (research stage)
  • “Federalism, Diversity, Equality, and Article III Judges: Geography, Identity and Bias,” 79 Mo. L. Rev. 119 (2014) [SSRN]
  • “Talking About Race and Equality,” 22 U. Fla. J.L. & Pub. Pol’y 417 (2011) [SSRN]
  • “Protecting the Dignity and Equality of Children: The Importance of Integrated Schools,” 20 Temp. Pol. & Civ. Rts. L. Rev. 71-119 (2010) [SSRN]
  • “Whither Sexual Orientation Analysis: The Proper Methodology When Due Process and Equal Protection Intersect,” 16 Wm. & Mary Bill Rts. J. 685-745 (2008) [SSRN]
  • “Lessons From and For ‘Disabled’ Students, 8 U. Iowa J. Gender & Race 73-97 (2004) (symposium) [SSRN]
  • “Emotional Segregation: Huckleberry Finn in the Modern Classroom,” 36 U. Mich. J.L. Reform 305 (2003) [SSRN]
  • “The Anti-canonical Lesson of Huckleberry Finn,” Cornell J.L. & Pub. Pol’y (2002) [SSRN]
  • “Foreword: Culture, Nationhood, and the Human Rights Ideal,” 33 U. Mich. J.L. Reform 233 (with Berta Hernandez-Truyol, 2000) [SSRN]
  • “Doing Anti-Racism: Making an Egalitarian Future,” 29 Contemporary Sociology 95 (with Joe R. Feagin / Jacqueline Johnson, 2000)
  • “Sharing Space: Why Racial Goodwill Isn’t Enough,” 32 Conn. L. Rev. 1 (1999) [SSRN]
  • “Diversity: The Red Herring of Equal Protection Analysis,” Am. U. J. Gender & L. (1998) [SSRN]
  • “The Education of Immigrant Children: The Competing Goals of State Sovereignty and Racial Equality,” 1 Rutgers Race & L. Rev. 155 (1998)

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.