Levin College of Law
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Married Women and the Law in Britain, North America, and the Common Law World

Friday & Saturday, May 6 – 7, 2022, 08:30 A.M. EST

UF Levin College of Law

The 2022 Conference on Coverture will be held May 6-7, 2022, and is sponsored by UF Levin College of Law, UF Law’s Center for Governmental Responsibility, the Center for European Studies at the University of Florida, and the UF Center for Gender, Sexualities, and Women’s Studies Research.

Please register here.

Conference Schedule:

Friday May 6, 2022

  • 8:30 a.m. – 11:00 a.m. | Ustler Hall | Continental Breakfast
  • 9:00 a.m. | Welcome and Introductions
  • 9:15 a.m. – 10:35 a.m. | Panel 1: The Social and Legal Constructions of Coverture
    • Cordelia Beattie – ‘I was much surprised to hear this sad news’: Alice Thornton and Coverture in Seventeenth-century England
    • Gwen Seabourne – Coverture and the medieval common law: patterns, gaps and puzzles in the weaving of the blanket
    • Holly Brewer – Transformations of Domestic Law (Redux): the Expansion of Coverture
  • 10:45 a.m. – 12:25 p.m. | Panel 2: Women in the Courts
    • Sara Butler – Marriage and Malicious Prosecution in Late Medieval England
    • Rebecca Mason – Family conflict, legal strategies, and married women’s litigation in early modern Scotland
    • Stephanie Brown – Feme Uncovered: Coverture and Crime in Late Medieval England
    • Krista Kesselring – From the Law-full to the Lawless: Women in the Late Elizabethan and Early Stuart Court of Star Chamber
  • 12:25 a.m. – 1:20 p.m. | Ustler Hall Courtyard | Lunch
  • 1:20 p.m. – 2:40 p.m. | Panel 3: Marital Breakdown
    • Amy Froide – Coverture and its Relationship to Marital Separations in Early Modern London
    • Tim Stretton – Combatting Marital Violence in England, 1500-1750
    • Emily Rhodes – ‘As man and wife ought to doe’: Unauthorized Marital Separation in Late Seventeenth-Century England
  • 2:50 p.m. – 3:50 p.m. | Panel 4: Married Women and Religion
    • Susan Cogan – “Catholic Wives, Coverture, and Citizenship in Early Modern England”
    • Maebh Harding – Article 41, Catholic Teachings and the Ossification of Victorian Family Power Structures in Irish Law
  • 4:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m. | Panel 5: Married Women and Culture
    • Susan Amussen – Gender and Racial Order on the late 17th century English stage
    • Allison Tait – The Curiously Female Household: Forming Families in the Shadow of Coverture

Saturday May 7, 2022

  • 8:30 a.m. – 11:00 a.m. | Ustler Hall | Continental Breakfast
  • 9:00 a.m. – 10:40 a.m. | Panel 6: Wives and Wealth
    • Cathryn Spence – ‘Given up by herself’: Wives and wills in early modern Scotland
    • Carla Spivack – Coverture After Death: How Inheritance Law Robs Women of Financial Self Determination
    • Amy Erickson – Coverture and the labour market in England, 1690-1851 or Wealthy businesswomen, marriage and succession in 18th-century London
    • Jennifer Aston – Removing ‘the Enjoyment of Her Property’: Coverture, Trusts, and the Matrimonial Causes Act 1857
  • 10:50 a.m. – 12:10 a.m. | Panel 7: Wives and The Economic Sphere
    • Emily Ireland – Who suffered under the South Sea Sufferers Bill 1721? Feme Coverts and parliamentary petitions in the wake of the South Sea bubble
    • Danaya Wright – The Liminal Status of Married Femes Sole
    • Mary Beth Combs – The 1870 Married Women’s Property Act and the Marriage Patterns of Nineteenth Century British Shopkeepers
  • 12:10 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. | Ustler Hall Courtyard | Lunch
  • 1:00 p.m. – 2:20 p.m. | Panel 8: Women and Empire
    • Phillip Emanuel – My Lady beginns now to sollicit hard’: Wives and the making of the imperial state
    • Brian Connolly – Sovereignty, Marriage, and the Intimate Sphere
    • Elizabeth Bowyer – Coverture and Married Women’s Contracting in Settler Colonial Societies: New Zealand 1840-1920
  • 2:30 p.m. – 3:50 p.m. | Panel 9: Marital Unity, Children, and Law Reform
    • Taylor Starr – External Advocacy for Legal Reform: Genesis of Ontario Family Law, 1918-1964
    • Josh Blecher-Cohen – Habeas Corpus for Child Custody in Nineteenth-Century American Legal Thought
    • Laura Rosenbury – The New Parental Rights
The speaker lineup is subject to change.

Published: January 31st, 2022

Category: Events

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University of Florida Levin College of Law
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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.