Levin College of Law
Welcome to UF LAW

Berta Esperanza Hernández-Truyol

Stephen C. O’Connell Chair
Professor of Law

Expertise

Civil Rights  • Comparative Law  • Constitutional Law  • Cuba  • Human Rights  • Human Trafficking  • International and Regional Human Rights (Inter-America and Europe)  • International and Transnational Law  • LGBT Issues  • Marriage Equality  • Race & Race Relations  • Sexual Orientation  • Sovereignty  • Transgender Rights  • War and War Crimes  • Women, Gender and the Law  • 

About

Professor Hernández-Truyol is an internationally renowned human rights scholar who utilizes an interdisciplinary and international framework to promote human well-being around the globe. She is engaged in initiatives that seek to develop, expand and transform the human rights discourse with a focus on issues of gender, race, ethnicity, culture, sexuality, language, and other vulnerabilities as well as their interconnections. As part of a team of UF scholars immersed in engagement with Cuba and in the re-establishment of relations between the Levin College of Law and the University of Havana Law School, she has traveled to Cuba to develop associations with professors across the UH campus. The initiative resulted in a joint, interdisciplinary conference held in Havana in the spring of 2016. She travels broadly to discuss and teach human rights. She has made presentations and offered courses in countries around the world including Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Guatemala, France, Italy, Mexico, Peru, Spain, and Uruguay.

Hernández-Truyol’s current research includes developing a new paradigm with the goal of “Awakening the Law.” Awakening is a concept embraced by myriad disciplines (theology, political science, philosophy, psychology, education, economics, sociology) but wholly absent in law. It entails reaching a critical consciousness to attain justice. In law, Awakening will necessitate unearthing the perceptual playbooks embedded in law, legal systems, and law enforcement that serve to perpetuate the status quo and its false claim to neutrality. The four published articles in the Awakening Series include:

Awakening the Law: A LatCritical Perspective (crafting both a theoretical framework and a methodology for Awakening the Law);
Awakening the Law—Unmasking Free Exercise Exceptionalism (utilizing International Human Rights norms to develop the Awakening framework in the context of collisions between free exercise rights on the one hand and privacy, intimacy, and equality rights on the other);
Awakening the Law: Kate Stoneman—An Awakened Woman (exploring multidimensionality, specifically focusing on sex and race); and
Who’s Afraid of Being Woke?—Critical Theory As Awakening to Erascism and Other Injustices (exposing the racialized bases of the attack on Woke).

Professor Hernández-Truyol is co-editing the Oxford Handbook of International LGBTI Law (with Andreas Ziegler, Université de Lausanne and Michael Lysander Fremuth, Universität Wien) to which she will also be a contributing author.

Education

LL.M., New York University School of Law
J.D., Albany Law School of Union University (cum laude)
B.A., Cornell University

Teaching and Scholarship

International Law, International Human Rights, Issues of Gender/Race and Latinas/Latinos in the Law, Employment Discrimination.

Courses

  • Constitutional Law
  • International Human Rights Law

Publications

Books

  • Orientamento Sessuale, Identità Di Genere E Tutela Dei Minori (Berta Esperanza Hernandez-Truyol and Roberto Virzo, eds., Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, 2016)
  • Senior Editor, The Oxford Encyclopedia of Latinos and Latinas in Contemporary Politics, Law, and Social Movements (Deena Gonzalez & Suzanne Oboler, eds.) (Oxford U. Press, 2012)

Book Chapters

  • “Commentary on Moore v. City of Cleveland,” in Feminist Judgments: Rewritten Property Opinions 311 (Eloisa C. Rodriguez-Dod & Elena Maria Marty-Nelson eds., Cambridge University Press 2021) (with Danaya C. Wright).
  • “Religion: Rites vs. Rights: Resolving Tensions Between LGBT Equality and Religious Liberty,” in Oxford Handbook of International LBGTI Law – Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity, Gender Expression and Sex Characteristics (SOGIESC) Law from an International-Comparative Perspective (forthcoming 2022)
  • “Embracing Our LGBT Youth—A Child Rights Paradigm,” in Oxford Handbook of Children’s Rights Law from an International-Comparative Perspective (Berta Esperanza Hernandez-Truyol, 2020)
  • “Migration Flows and Border Control Present Crises and Lessons from U.S. History,” in International Migrations and Social Sustainability (forthcoming 2016)
  • “Talking Back: From Feminist History and Theory to Feminist Legal Methods and Judgments,” in Feminist Judgments: Rewritten Opinions of the United States Supreme Court (Cambridge; Kathy Stanchi, Linda Berger and Bridget Crawford, eds. 2016) [Link]
  • La Juventud y las Familias LGBTI Como Poblaciones Vulnerables: Mito y Realidad de las Protecciones Legales, in Orientamento Sessuale, Identità Di Genere E Tutela Dei Minori (Berta Esperanza Hernandez-Truyol and Roberto Virzo, eds., Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, 2016).
  • International Organizations and Gender Discrimination, in Evolutions in the Law of International Organizations (Brill Nijhoff, 2015.)
  • Latinas, Culture and Globalization: Unveiling Gendered Inequalities” in Changes, Conflicts and Ideologies in Contemporary Hispanic Culture (Teresa Fernandez‐Ulloa, ed., Cambridge Scholars Publishing, U.K., 2014)

Encyclopedia Entries

  • “LGBTI-Transnational Law: Sex as Crime, Violence as Control” in Oxford Encyclopedia of LGBT Politics and Policy (2020)
  • “Latina/o Indigena” (with Devon Pena) and “Human Rights” in The Encyclopedia of Latino/a Politics, Law and Social Movements (Oboler & Gonzalez, eds., Oxford Univ. Press, 2015)

Articles

  • “Tribute to Professor Sharon E. Rush,” 71 Fla. L. Rev. vii (2019).
  • “Introductory Note to Resolution Cp/R, Es. 1106 (2168/18) (Oas), Precautionary Measure No. 731–18 & Precautionary Measure No. 505-18 (Iachr) Aq1,” in International Legal Materials (ILM) on Precautionary Measures for Migrant Children in the U.S., Resolutions 63 and 64 (IACHR) and Resolution 1106 on the U.S. Policy of Separating Migrant Families (OAS) 371 (2019).
  • “Hope, Dignity, and the Limits of Democracy,” 10 N.E. U.L. Rev. 654-90 (2018) [SSRN]
  • “The Culture of Gender/The Gender of Culture: Cuban Women, Culture, and Change-The Island and the Diaspora,” 29 Fl. J. Int’l L. 181 (2017) (Also published in Spanish as “La Cultura del Género/El Género de la Cultura: Cubanas, Cultura y Cambio-La Isla y La Diáspora,” 29 Fla. J. Int’l L. 181S (2017)
  • “Glocalizing Women’s Health and Safety: Migration, Work, and Labor,” 15 Santa Clara J. Int’l L. 48 (2017) [SSRN]
  • “Culture Clashes: Indigenous Populations and Globalization – the Case of Belo Monte,” 12 Sea. J. for Soc. Just. 775 (2014) [SSRN]
  • “Globally Speaking – Honoring the Victims’ Stories: Matsuda’s Human Rights Praxis,” 112 Mich. L. Rev. First Impression 99 (2014) [SSRN]
  • “A Need for Culture Change: GLBT Latinas/os and Immigration,” 6 FIU L. Rev. 269 (2012) [SSRN]
  • “Revisiting Mothering? – A Mother’s Thoughts: A Response to Darren Rosenblum’s Unsex Mothering: Toward a Culture of New Parenting,” Harv. J.L. & Gender Online (2012) [SSRN]
  • “On Que(e)rying Feminism: Reclaiming the F Word,” (Kathryn Abrams, ed.), in Issues in Legal Scholarship, (Be. Press, 2011)
  • “Unsex CEDAW? No! SuperSex It!,” 20 Colum. J. Gender & L. 195 (2011) [SSRN]
  • “Narratives of Identity: Nation, and Outsiders Within Outsiders: Not Yet a Post-Anything World,” 14 Harv. Latino L. Rev. 325 (2011) [SSRN]
  • “A Rose by Any Other Name, A Response to Libby Adler’s Gay Rights and Lefts: Rights Critique and Distributive Analysis for Real Law Reform,” Harv. C.R.-C.L. L. Rev. Colloquium (2011)
  • Maria Lugones’s Work as a Human Rights Idea(l) (with Mariana Ribeiro) , 18 Berkeley La Raza L.J. 28 (2009) [SSRN]
  • The Gender Bend: Culture, Sex, and Sexuality–A LatCritical Human Rights Map of Latina/o Border Crossings, 83 Ind. L.J. 1283 (2008) [SSRN]
  • Sex & Globalization, 11 Harv. Latino L. Rev. 173 (2008) [SSRN]
  • Beyond the First Decade: A Forward-Looking History of LatCrit Theory, Community and Praxis (with Angela Harris & Francisco Valdés), 17 Berkeley La Raza L.J. 169 (2006); 26 Chicana/o-Latina/o L. Rev. 237 (2006) [SSRN]
  • On Disposable People & Human Well-Being: Health, Money & Power, 13 U.C. Davis J. Int’l L. & Pol’y 101-132 (2006) [SSRN]
  • Children & Immigration: International, Local, & Social Responsibilities (with Justin Luna), 15 B.U. Pub. Int. L.J. 297-317 (2006) [SSRN]
  • Sexual Labor and Human Rights (with Jane Larson), 37 Colum. Hum. Rts. L. Rev. 391-445 (2006)
  • The Global & The Local: Legal Considerations of “Nine-One-One,” Oregon Law Review (forthcoming) Building Bridges V – Cubans Without Borders: Mujeres Unidas por su Historia, 55 Fla. L. Rev. 225 (2003)
  • Out of the Shadows: Traversing the Imaginary of Sameness, Difference and Relationalism – A Human Rights Proposal, 17 Wis. Women’s L.J. 111 (2002) [SSRN]
  • Crossing Borderlands of Inequality with International Legal Methodologies – The Promise of Multiple Feminisms, 44 German Yearbook of Int’l L. 113 (2001)
  • On Becoming the Other: Cubans, Castro and Elian – A LatCritical Analysis, 78 Denv. U. L. Rev. 687 (2001)
  • Latinas, Culture and Human Rights: A Model for Making Change, Saving Soul, 23 Women’s Rts. L. Rep. 21 (2001) [SSRN]
  • Property, Wealth, Inequality and Human Rights: A Formula for Reform (with Shelbi D. Day), 34 Ind. L. Rev. 1213 (2001) [SSRN]

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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.