Teresa Reid

Emeritus Master Legal Skills Professor

Emeritus Assistant Director, Criminal Justice Center

Email:
reid@law.ufl.edu

Phone:
(352) 273-0879

About

Emeritus Professor Teresa Reid (formerly Teresa Rambo) has been a member of the University of Florida College of Law faculty since 1987. Her areas of expertise include the Death Penalty, Legal Writing, Legal Professionalism, and Evidence. She is the co-author of Legal Writing by Design: A Guide to Great Briefs and Memos (Carolina Academic Press, Second Edition 2012). She served as the faculty advisor to numerous law school groups including the Journal of Law and Public Policy, the Phi Delta Phi International Legal Honor Society, the Native American Law Student Association, and the Law Transfer Student Organization.

As an active member of the Florida Bar, Professor Reid has provided pro bono legal assistance in areas including the death penalty, divorce and family law, environmental and land use regulation, Medicare, and legal ethics. She has presented numerous lectures on the topics of attorney conduct, professionalism, ethics, legal writing, appellate advocacy, domestic violence, and the death penalty. She has served on the Florida Supreme Court’s Commission on Lawyer Professionalism, and currently serves on the Eighth Judicial Circuit’s Professionalism Panel.

Professor Reid is also a Florida Supreme Court certified mediator in family law mediation, appellate law mediation, circuit court mediation, and county court mediation.

Education

J.D., Santa Clara University, summa cum laude

B.A., University of Florida, high honors

Courses

Death Penalty Law Seminar
Professional Responsibility and the Legal Profession

Publications

Legal Writing by Design: A Guide to Great Briefs and Memos (with Leanne J. Pflaum) (Carolina Academic Press, Second Edition 2013)

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.