2019 Inductees

To permanently honor outstanding and notable alumni of the University of Florida Levin College of Law and their contributions to the state and University, the Law Center Association Board of Trustees established the Heritage of Leadership Recognition Society. The Selection Committee determined the initial classes of inductees, barring exceptional circumstances, would be honored posthumously.

Class of 2019

Joseph R. Julin (1926-1993)

Joseph Julin attended Northwestern University, earning his LL.B. degree in 1952. During law school, he served as class president and associate editor of the Law Review and was elected to Order of the Coif. After graduation, he entered private practice in Chicago. In 1959, he joined the faculty at the University of Michigan Law School, where he served as Associate Dean.

In 1971, Julin moved to Gainesville to begin his tenure as dean of UF Law. Under his leadership, the school’s national prominence increased significantly. Julin led the establishment of the Graduate Tax Program, bolstered the Legal Information Center’s innovations in electronic research, recruited new faculty, and provided support to student and faculty to participate in international programs.

After stepping down as Dean in 1980, Julin served as president of the National Conference of Bar Examiners, president of the Association of American Law Schools, and chair of the ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions. As Special Master to the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida, he resolved decades-long litigation through a creative solution to correct deficiencies in Florida’s state prisons. From 1985 until his death in 1993, Julin held the role of Chesterfield Smith Professor of Law.

Isaac Benjamin Krentzman, Jr. (1914-1998)

Class of 1938. Ben Krentzman eceived his B.S. degree from the University of Florida in 1935, where he excelled both as a student and a leader. He remained in Gainesville to attend UF Law, earning his law degree in 1938 and serving as Florida Blue Key President.

Krentzman joined the Army in 1941, achieving the rank of lieutenant colonel and earning a Bronze Star for his combat service in WWII. After his discharge in 1946, he returned to Clearwater to continue a legal career that would span the next 50 years. He founded a small law firm before serving as city attorney for Largo and Clearwater. He was also elected president of the Clearwater Bar Association and served on the Board of Governors of The Florida Bar.

In 1967, Krentzman was nominated to become a federal judge by Senator George Smathers and was appointed to the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida by President Lyndon B. Johnson. Among the many high-profile cases Krentzman presided over was the Supreme Court’s desegregation mandate imposing court-ordered busing in the 1960s and 1970s. Krentzman later served as Chief Judge of the Middle District of Florida and assumed Senior Status in 1982. He remained on the court until his death in 1998.

William A. McRae, Jr. (1909-1973)

Class of 1933. William McRae earned his law degree from the University of Florida in 1933 before becoming a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University. He practiced law in Jacksonville prior to joining the Army, where he served as a colonel in WWII and an adviser to the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the drafting of the United Nations Charter. Upon his return, he became a professor at UF Law and served as chairman of the university’s Board of Trustees and as president of The Florida Bar.

In 1961, McRae became the first federal judge appointed by President John F. Kennedy. He was later reassigned from the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida to a new seat on the Middle District of Florida. He was named Chief Judge in 1971.

During his 12 years on the bench, McRae made many key decisions, including a ruling that the Duval County School Board’s plan for complying with the Supreme Court’s desegregation mandate was insufficient. He wrote his own controversial plan for pairing schools to ensure compliance.

Other historic rulings included ordering the state’s disorderly conduct statute unconstitutional, throwing out portions of Florida’s obscenity law, and freeing hundreds of prisoners on the grounds they had been convicted without the benefit of counsel.

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.