Levin College of Law
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Dean’s Note – January 2022

Spring Food Truck Rally

Dear Alumni and Friends,

A new year is underway at UF Law! We kicked off the semester with another Compressed Course Week. More than 20 experienced lawyers and judges joined us in Miami to offer students an intensive Civil Litigation Skills for New Lawyers course. In Gainesville, lawyers and judges offered many other courses, including Artificial Intelligence and Litigation Strategies, Corporate Litigation, Debt Finance, Impact Litigation, Pleading the Modern Civil Rights Case, Securities Law Enforcement, Space Law, the Role of the State Attorneys General, and a Trademark Prosecution Simulation. We thank the many alumni who shared invaluable advice with our students through these one-credit courses.

All students are now back on campus. We welcomed everyone to the new semester with a food truck rally generously sponsored by the Gene (JD 72) and Elaine Glasser Fund. You may see a glimpse of the event in the photo above.

I am also excited to announce two new faculty hires. Professor Jon Marshfield will join UF Law as an Associate Professor starting in August, 2022. Professor Marshfield is a scholar of state constitutional law, constitutional design, and theories of constitutional change. Professor Jiaying Jiang joined us this month as an Assistant Professor as part of the university’s Artificial Intelligence Initiative. Professor Jiang is a scholar of the regulation of FinTech, cryptocurrency, and blockchain, and of law and technology more broadly.

I look forward to sharing more great news in updates to come. For now, I hope you will save the date for Gator Giving Day on February 17, 2022. No gift is too small – and all gifts will support our students, faculty, and programs.

Thank you for all the ways you continue to rise with UF Law!

Laura

Laura Ann Rosenbury
Dean
 



Double Gator Reception
Help us recruit more double (and triple!) Gators to UF Law.  Join us in Gainesville for a reception on February 16.  For information and to RSVP, please contact engage@law.ufl.edu.


Alumni Highlight
UF Law alum Larry Stewart (JD 63) has authored Chasing Justice. Learn more here.


2022 Alumni Awards
We are now accepting nominations for the 2022 UF Law Alumni Awards.  Help us honor great UF Law Gators!  Please submit nominations using this form.

 

Published: January 27th, 2022

Category: Dean's Note

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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.