Levin College of Law
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Kenneth B. Nunn

Emeritus Dr. Patricia Hilliard-Nunn Memorial Racial Justice Term Professor
Emeritus Professor of Law

CV

SSRN

bepress (SelectedWorks)

Phone:
(352) 273-0660

About

Kenneth Nunn served as the Emeritus Dr. Patricia Hilliard-Nunn Memorial Racial Justice Term Professor and was the Associate Director of the Center on Children and Families at UF Law. Professor Nunn joined the UF Law faculty in 1990 and has twice been named “teacher of the year.” His teaching and scholarship expertise lies in the fields of Criminal Law, Criminal Procedure, Race Relations and the Law, Police Brutality, Race and the Criminal Process, Cultural Studies, and African and Africa-centered thought. Along with Sharon Rush, he co-founded the Center for the Study of Race and Race Relations, one of a few law school centers that focus on race. He previously worked as a public defender in San Francisco and Washington, DC and as a staff attorney at the Southern Africa Project. Professor Nunn has published a variety of written works, including several book chapters and various articles on topics such as race, diversity, critical theories and human injustice. He was a member of the Florida Innocence Commission that was established to suggest changes in Florida law to avoid wrongful convictions. He has also taught as a visiting law faculty member at Washington and Lee University School of Law, Florida A&M University College of Law and at Makerere University in Uganda. Professor Nunn is an Affiliate Professor in the UF Center for African Studies and in the UF African American Studies Program.

He received his J.D. from the University of California, Berkeley.

Education

J.D., University of California, Berkeley
A.B., Stanford University

Teaching and Scholarship

Criminal Law, Criminal Procedure, African American History and the Law, African Traditional Law, Police Brutality, Race and the Criminal Process and Law and Cultural Studies.

Courses

  • Criminal Law
  • Criminal Procedure: Police and Police Practices

Publications

Books

  • Associate Editor for Law and Society, MacMillan Encyclopedia of Race and Racism (Thomson Pub., 2007).

Chapters in Books

  • “Sankofa and the Congo: Fu-Kian, African Consciousness, and Nation Building in the African Diaspora,” in Revisiting African Studies in a Globalized World (Albert K. Awedoba, et
    al., eds.) (Univ. of Ghana Press, 2017)
  • “The Black Nationalist Cure to Disproportionate Minority Contact,” in Justice For Kids: Keeping Kids Out of the Juvenile Justice System (Nancy Dowd, ed.) (NYU Press, 2011)
  • “Still Up On the Roof: Race, Victimology and the Response to Hurricane Katrina,” in Hurricane Katrina: America’s Unnatural Disaster(Jeremy I. Levitt & Matthew C. Whitaker, eds.) (Univ. of Nebraska Press, 2009).
  • “Rosewood,” in When Sorry Isn’t Enough: The Controversy over Apologies and Reparations for Human Injustices (Roy L. Brooks, ed., 1999).

Articles

  • “Essentially Black”: Legal Theory and the Morality of Conscious Racial Identity,” 97 Neb. L. Rev. 287 (2018). [SSRN]
  • “Ideology, Gentile and Pretrial Attorney Speech: A Response to Professor Tarkington,” 66 Fla. L. Rev. Forum 35 (2015). [SSRN]
  • “The ‘R-Word’: A Tribute to Derrick Bell,” 22 Fla. J.L. & Pub. Pol’y 431 (2011).
  • “Diversity As a Dead End,” 35 Pepp. L. Rev. 705 (2008).
  • “Foreword: New Explorations in Culture and Crime—Definitions, Theory, Method,” 17 Fla. J.L. & Pub. Pol’y vii (2006).
  • “Diversity Matters: Race, Gender & Ethnicity in Legal Education,” 15 Fla. J.L. & Pub. Pol’y 11 (2003). [SSRN]
  • “Race, Crime and the Pool of Surplus Criminality: Or Why the War on Drugs Was a War on Blacks,” 6 Iowa J. Gender Race & Just. 381 (2002), excerpted and reprinted in Structured Inequality in the United States: Critical Discussions on the Continuing Significance of Race, Ethnicity and Gender (Aguirre & Baker, eds., 2d ed. 2007).
  • “The Child as Other’: Race and Differential Treatment in the Juvenile Justice System,” 51 DePaul L. Rev. 679 (2002). [SSRN]
  • “The ‘Darden Dilemma’: Should African Americans Prosecute Crimes?” 68 Fordham L. Rev. 1473 (2000).
  • “Law, Culture, and the Morality of Judicial Choice,” 28 Cumberland L. Rev. 581 (1998).
  • “Illegal Aliens: Extraterrestrials and White Fear,” 48 Fla. L. Rev. 397 (1997).
  • “Law as a Eurocentric Enterprise,” 15 Law & Ineq. 323 (1997), reprinted in Critical Race Theory: The Cutting Edge (Delgado & Stefancic, eds., 2d ed. 2000).

Other Publications

  • “Racism Is the Problem, Not Stand Your Ground Laws – Room For Debate,” N.Y. Times, (March 21, 2012).
  • “Minority Groups,” World Book Encyclopedia (2003).
  • “Racial Profiling,” World Book Encyclopedia (2002).
  • “Stereotyping,” World Book Encyclopedia (2002).
  • “Racism,” World Book Encyclopedia (2001).

 See vita for complete list of publications.

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