Levin College of Law
Welcome to UF LAW

Rachel Arnow-Richman

Gerald A. Rosenthal Chair in Labor & Employment Law
Professor of Law

SSRN

Phone:
(352) 273-0645

Expertise

Contracts  • Labor & Employment Law  • 

About

Rachel Arnow-Richman is the inaugural Gerald A. Rosenthal Chair in Labor & Employment Law. Prior to joining the University of Florida faculty, Professor Arnow-Richman was the Chauncy Wilson Memorial Research Professor and Director of the Workplace Law Program at the University of Denver, Sturm College of Law. She has also held faculty appointments at the University of Colorado Law School, Fordham Law School, Temple University School of Law, and Texas A& M Law School (formerly Texas Wesleyan). Before entering law teaching, she served as a judicial clerk to the New Jersey Supreme Court and practiced employment and commercial law at Drinker, Biddle and Reath LLP in Philadelphia.

Professor Arnow-Richman teaches and publishes in the areas of employment law and contracts. She is widely known for her work on the #MeToo movement and the rights of accused harassers, noncompete reform and labor mobility issues, and for a series of articles proposing mandatory advance notice and severance pay for terminated employees. She participated in drafting the Uniform Law Commission’s recently passed Uniform Restrictive Employment Agreement Act and is a past chair of both the Labor & Employment Law Section and the Contracts Section of the American Association of Law Schools.

The Converge for Impact project is led by Professor Rachel Arnow-Richman.

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Education 

B.A., Rutgers University
J.D., Harvard Law School
LL.M., Temple University School of Law

Courses

  • Contracts
  • Employment Law

Publications

Selected Articles

Battling the Form: A Front-End Approach to Default-Use Noncompetes, 34 Fla. J. L Pub Pol’y. (forthcoming 2024).

Deconstructing Employment Contract Law, 75 FLA. L. REV. 897 (2023) (with J.H. Verkerke).

Do Social Movements Spur Corporate Change? The Rise of “MeToo Termination Rights” in CEO Contracts, 98 Ind. L.J. 125 (2022) (with James Hicks and Steven Davidoff Solomon). [SSRN]

Temporary Termination: A Layoff Law Blueprint for the COVID Era, 64 Wash. U.J.L.P. 1 (2021). [SSRN]

The New Enforcement Regime: Revisiting the Law of Employee Mobility (and the Scholarship of Charles Sullivan) with 2020 Vision, 50 Seton Hall L. Rev. 1223 (2020).

Integrated Learning, Integrated Faculty, 92 Temple L. Rev. 745 (2020).

Harassers’ Rights and Employer Best Practices: The Quest for a Calibrated Approach in the Era of MeToo, 54 USF L. Rev. 1 (2019). [SSRN]

Of Power and Process: Handling Harassers in an At-Will World, 128 Yale L.J.F. 85 (2018). [SSRN]

Modifying At-Will Employment Contracts, 57 B.C. L. Rev. 427 (2016). [SSRN]

Mainstreaming Employment Contract Law: The Common Law Case for Reasonable Notice of Termination, 66 Fla. L.Rev. 1513 (2014). [SSRN]

Just Notice: Re-Reforming Employment at Will, 58 UCLA L. Rev. 1 (2010). [SSRN]

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.