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2021 UF Law Faculty Highlights

UF Law faculty continue to engage in cutting-edge research on the most pressing issues of our time. Below are select awards and recognition for their scholarship and activities in 2021.

Mary Adkins received the 2021 Rembert Patrick Award for the best scholarly book on a Florida history topic from the Florida Historical Society.

Rachel Arnow-Richman received a Research Promotion Initiative Award from UF’s Office of Strategic Communications & Marketing for her article titled Temporary Termination: A Layoff Law Blueprint for the COVID Era that was published in the Washington University Journal of Law & Policy.

Clay Calvert was named the University of Florida’s Teacher/Scholar of the Year.

Larry DiMatteo was awarded a Fulbright Professorship for 2022. His placement will be at Comenius University in Bratislava where he will lend guidance on “Building a World Class Master of Law program” and the “Internationalization of Slovakian Legal Research.” This is the second time he has been awarded a Fulbright. The first was in 2012 at the University of Sofia, Bulgaria. Additionally, the U.S. State Department has appointed DiMatteo as a “Fulbright Specialist” for the term June 6, 2021 to August 6, 2025, which makes him eligible to be matched with projects designed by host institutions in over 150 countries globally.

Andrew Hammond received the 2021 Richard D. Cudahy Writing Competition on Regulatory and Administrative Law for his article titled Litigating Welfare Rights: Medicaid, SNAP, and the Legacy of the New Property published in the Northwestern University Law Review. He also won the Southeastern Association of Law Schools 2021 Call for Papers Competition for his article titled Territorial Exceptionalism and the American Welfare State, 119 Mich. L. Rev. 1639 (2021).

Rachel Inman received the Law Faculty/Administrator Professionalism Award from the Henry Latimer Center for Professionalism and the Standing Committee on Professionalism of The Florida Bar.

Lea Johnston was elected to the American Law Institute.

Charlene Luke was named the Hubert C. Hurst Eminent Scholar Chair in Law at UF Law.

Merritt McAlister received the 2021 AALS Federal Courts Section Best Untenured Article Award for her article titled “Downright Indifference”: Examining Unpublished Decisions in the Federal Courts of Appeals published in the Michigan Law Review.

Grayson McCouch was named the Clarence TeSelle Professor at UF Law.

Kenneth B. Nunn was named the Dr. Patricia Hilliard-Nunn Memorial Racial Justice Term Professor at UF Law.

Bill Page’s article Direct Evidence of a Sherman Act Agreement was one of only four articles nominated in the Concerted Practices category of the 2021 Annual Antitrust Writing Awards.

Robert Rhee testified before the U.S. House Committee on Financial Services, United States Congress, on July 21, 2021 for a hearing on Bond Rating Agencies: Examining the “Nationally Recognized” Statistical Rating Organizations.

Elizabeth Rowe received a Research Promotion Initiative Award from UF’s Office of Strategic Communications & Marketing for her article titled Regulating Facial Recognition Technology in the Private Sector that was published in the Stanford Technology Law Review. She was also named a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation.

John Stinneford was named the Edward Rood Eminent Scholar Chair at UF Law.

Danaya Wright was named the T. Terrell Sessums and Gerald Sohn Professor in Constitutional Law at UF Law. She also received a Research Promotion Initiative Award from UF’s Office of Strategic Communications & Marketing for her article titled Drone Airspace in Railroad Corridors: Repurposing Nineteenth-Century Property Law for the Twenty-First Century that will be published in the Iowa Law Review.

Published: December 14th, 2021

Category: Faculty News

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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.