Levin College of Law
Welcome to UF LAW

Celebrate CGR’s 50th Anniversary

The Center for Governmental Responsibility
appreciates everyone who attended
the 50th anniversary celebration on October 13, 2023.
Explore a few photos from the celebration below.

University of Florida Levin College of Law
Center for Governmental Responsibility
50th Anniversary Celebration
 Friday, October 13, 2023

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

 

Campus Programming

University of Florida Levin College of Law
309 Village Drive
Gainesville, FL 32611

Parking restrictions will be lifted at the law school
on Friday, October 13, 2023.
For directions to the law school and
other transportation information, click here.
A UF Campus Map may be found here.

 

Check In & Campus Tours

11:30 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.

Luncheon & Keynote Remarks
with Marc Aidinoff, Institute for Advanced Study
“We Can Make Rights: A Democratic Approach to Artificial Intelligence”

12:00 p.m. – 1:30 p.m.

Five Decades in Review

1:30 p.m. – 2:45 p.m.

CGR Project Updates

3:00 p.m. – 3:30 p.m.

 “What CGR Meant to Me” Panel

3:30 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

 Evening Gala

UF Hilton Conference Center
1714 SW 34th Street
Gainesville, FL 32607

 

Cocktail Reception

6:30 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.

Recognition Banquet

7:30 p.m. – 10:00 p.m.

$150 Per Person / $1,250 Table of 8
(Pay by credit card below)

GALA RSVP HERE

 

Hotel rooms for overnight stays at the UF Hilton
are available at https://group.hilton.com/xhmm7o
or by email to crodenwoldt@hiltongainesvilleuf.com

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

Join us to reconnect with friends and colleagues
while we recognize CGR’s successes during the
past fifty years and look ahead toward the next fifty.
We will also honor CGR founder and current Co-Director,
Professor Jon Mills, who will retire later this year.
We look forward to seeing you.

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

 

KEYNOTE SPEAKER: MARC AIDINOFF

Marc Aidinoff is a researcher at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. He recently served as Chief of Staff and Senior Advisor in the Biden-Harris White House Office of Science and Technology Policy where he helped lead a team of 150 policymakers on key initiatives, including the Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights, guidance to ensure federally funded research is publicly accessible, and reigniting the Cancer Moonshot.

Aidinoff’s current book project, Rebooting Liberalism: The Computerization of the Social Contract, traces the role of technology in transforming the U.S. welfare state from a localized system of uneven entitlements to a national regime of extraction. Most recently his historical writing has appeared in Abstractions and Embodiments: New Histories of Computing and Society (Johns Hopkins University Press) and The Washington Post. Aidinoff’s research has been supported by the Horowitz Foundation for Social Policy, the Association of Centers for the Study of Congress, the Charles Babbage Institute, and the Internet Policy Research Initiative, among others.

Previously, Aidinoff has served as a policy advisor to Vice President Joe Biden in the Obama-Biden Administration, strategic consultant to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, and the Ambrose Monell Foundation National Fellow in Technology and Democracy at the Jefferson Scholars Foundation. He has taught at the University of Mississippi, Harvard College, the Rosedale Freedom Project, and MIT. Aidinoff completed his Ph.D. from MIT and B.A. from Harvard College.

Published: September 22nd, 2023

Category: Events

Comments are closed.

University of Florida Levin College of Law
309 Village Drive
PO Box 117620
Gainesville, FL 32611
(352) 273-0804
Text-Only Version

Tools

Website

Quick Links

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.