Levin College of Law
Welcome to UF LAW

John F. Stinneford

Edward Rood Eminent Scholar Chair
Professor of Law
Director, Master of the Study of Law Program
Senior Fellow, Hamilton Center for Classical and Civic Education

Expertise

Constitutional Law  • Criminal Law  • Criminal Procedure  • Ethics & Professional Responsibility  • Legal Ethics  • Professional Responsibility  • Sentencing  • White Collar Crime  • 

About

Professor Stinneford researches, teaches, and consults about legal ethics, criminal law, criminal procedure, and constitutional law. His work has been cited by the United States Supreme Court, several state supreme courts and federal courts of appeal, and numerous scholars. It has been published in numerous scholarly journals including the Georgetown Law Journal, the Northwestern University Law Review, the Virginia Law Review, the Notre Dame Law Review, and the William & Mary Law Review. The Stanford-Yale Junior faculty forum selected one of his articles as the best paper in the category of Constitutional History, and the AALS Criminal Justice Section named another article as the best paper in its Junior Scholars Paper Competition. In the fall of 2015, he was a Visiting Scholar at the Georgetown Law Center, Center for the Constitution.

John Stinneford was the inaugural Director and serves as a Senior Fellow of the Hamilton Center for Classical and Civic Education at the University of Florida. The Hamilton Center is a new academic unit whose mission is to promote civic education and civic discourse and to foster intellectual diversity. Its core purpose is to help students develop the knowledge, habits of thought, analytical skills, and character to be citizens and leaders in a free society. It will do so through curriculum, public programming, and (in conjunction with the Florida Department of Education) teacher training. Its curriculum will focus primarily on the Western intellectual tradition and the American founding.

Before joining the Florida faculty in 2009, Stinneford clerked for the Hon. James Moran of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, served as an Assistant United States Attorney, and practiced law with Winston & Strawn in Chicago. Stinneford teaches first-year courses in Criminal Law and Constitutional Law, and upper-level courses in Professional Responsibility, Criminal Procedure, Federal Criminal Law, Law & Literature, and White Collar Crime.

Education

J.D., Harvard Law School
M.A., Harvard University
B.A., University of Virginia

Teaching and Scholarship

Legal Ethics / Professional Responsibility
Criminal Law
Criminal Procedure
Sentencing
Constitutional Law

Courses

  • Constitutional Law
  • Criminal Law
  • Professional Responsibility and the Legal Profession

Publications

Articles

  • Is Solitary Confinement a Punishment?, 115 Nw. Univ. L. Rev. 9 (2020) [SSRN]
  • Experimental Punishments​, 95 Notre Dame L. Rev. 39 (2019) [SSRN]
  • The Original Meaning of ‘Cruel’, 105 Geo. L.J. 441 (2017) [SSRN]
  • Dividing Crime, Multiplying Punishments, 48 U.C. Davis L. Rev. 1955 (2015) [SSRN]
  • The “Not a Search” Game, 38 Harv. J.L. & Pub. Pol’y 17 (2014) (invited) [SSRN]
  • Death, Desuetude, and Original Meaning, 56 Wm. & Mary L. Rev. 531 (2014) [SSRN]
  • The Illusory Eighth Amendment, 63 Am. U. L. Rev. 437 (2013). [SSRN]
  • Youth Matters: Miller v. Alabama and the Future of Juvenile Sentencing, 11 Ohio St. J. Crim. L. (2013) (invited). [SSRN]
  • Punishment without Culpability, 101 J. Crim. L. & Criminology 653 (2012) (invited). [SSRN]
  • Rethinking Proportionality under the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause, 97 Va. L. Rev. 899 (2011)(winner, Association of American Law Schools Criminal Justice Section Junior Scholars Call for Papers Competition). [SSRN]
  • Evolving Away from Evolving Standards of Decency, 23 Federal Sentencing Rep.87 (2010). [SSRN]
  • The Original Meaning of ‘Unusual’: The Eighth Amendment as a Bar to Cruel Innovation, 102 Nw. U. L. Rev. 1739 (2008) (chosen for presentation at the 2008 Stanford/Yale Junior Faculty Forum; winner, SEALS 2008 Call for Papers competition). [SSRN]
  • Incapacitation through Maiming: Chemical Castration, the Eighth Amendment, and the Denial of Human Dignity, 3 U. St. Thomas L.J. 559 (2006) (symposium). [SSRN]
  • Subsidiarity, Federalism, and Federal Prosecution of Street Crime, 2 J. Cath. Soc. Thought 495 (2005) (symposium) (peer-reviewed). [SSRN]

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.