Levin College of Law
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Thomas T. Ankersen

Emeritus Legal Skills Professor
Emeritus Director, Conservation Clinic

About

Professor Ankersen directed the University of Florida Conservation Clinic, the experiential learning arm of the College’s Environmental and Land Use Law Program. Ankersen also directed the College’s Costa Rica Program. He practices domestic, international and comparative environmental law with an emphasis on Florida, Latin America and the Caribbean. Internationally he has worked and/or taught in 30 countries, though his focus remains in Latin America and the Caribbean. In the late 1990’s he helped to found the Mesoamerican Environmental Law Network, a consortium of non-governmental advocacy organizations. Internationally, his work has led to both domestic law reforms and international agreements in Africa and Central America as well as in the United Nations treaty system (World Heritage Convention Operational Guidelines). Ankersen has used his clinical experience to aid in the formation of 4 new environmental law clinics at law schools in Costa Rica and the Brazilian Amazon. In Florida, Ankersen works with state and local governments as well and non-profits to pursue innovative solutions to environmental and land use issues through law and policy. He serves as Florida Sea Grant’s statewide legal specialist. Ankersen is fluent in Spanish.

Professor Ankersen’s international scholarship has centered on comparative civil and common law, in particular comparative property law. In 2005 he received a MacArthur Foundation research and writing grant to study land tenure and administration in Latin America, which led to pioneering English language research into the “social function doctrine,” a gloss on property ownership not found in the common law. He has also published on the growing recognition of an international law of property, distinct from domestic law, and its relation to human rights and sustainable development law. His articles have been re-published in Spanish and Portuguese. Domestically, Ankersen researches and publishes in the area of environmental restoration, climate adaptation, and marine and coastal law and policy. He serves on the board of the National Sea Grant Law and Policy Journal.

Education

J.D., University of Florida
M.A., University of South Florida
B.A., University of South Florida

Teaching and Scholarship

Domestic/International Environmental Law & Policy, Water Law, Protection of Biological Diversity

Courses

  • Conservation Clinic

Publications

  • Recreational Rights to the Dry Sand Beach in Florida: Property, Custom and Controversy, 25 Ocean & Coastal L.J. 1 (2020) (with Alyson Flournoy & Sasha Alvarenga) [SSRN]
  • Adaptation Action Areas in Florida: The State of Play, 40 Envtl. & Land Use Law Section Rep. (Florida Bar), No. 3 at 1 (January 2020) (with Brandon Pownall & Alexa Menashe)
  • Conservation Easements and Coastal Armoring: Protecting Sea Turtle Nesting Habitat Through Property Ownership, 182 J. Ocean & Coastal Mgmt. 10944 (December 2019) (with Melissa Hill, Martha Monroe, Raymond Cathy & Tom Kay)
  • Coastal Armoring and Sea Turtles: Beachfront Homeowners’ Opinions and Intent, J. Coastal Mgmt. 6 (2019) (with Melissa Hill, Martha Monroe, Raymond Carthy & Tom Kay)
  • Boating, Waterways, and the Rights of Navigation in Florida  (5th edition, Florida Sea Grant) (with Byron Flagg, Kaci Poor & Jennifer Saviano) [SSRN]
  • Defining “Harmful to the Water Resources” in the 2016 Outstanding Florida Springs Legislation, 39 Envtl. & Land Use Law Section Rep. (Florida Bar), No.3 at 1 (January 2019) (with Kathryn Slattery & Robert Palmer, Ph.D.)
  • Seizing the ‘Organic’ Moment: Cuba’s Agricultural Crossroads and Certified Organic Export Potential, 21 Drake J. Agric. L. 297 (2016) (with Wesley J. Hevia, Micahel T. Olexa & William A. Messina Jr.) [SSRN]
  • Got Guts? The Iconic Streams of the U.S. Virgin Islands and the Law’s Ephemeral Edge, 32 J. Envtl. L. & Litig. 101 (2016) (with Jesse Reiblich)  [SSRN]
  • Turtles Without Borders: The International and Domestic Law Basis for the Shared Conservation, Management, and Use of Sea Turtles in Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama (with Gabriela Stocks, Franklin Paniagua, and Sekita Grant), 18 J. Int’l Wildlife L. & Pol’y 1 (2015)
  • Feeling the Squeeze: The Troubled Future of Lateral Beach Access in Florida, 35 Envtl. & Land Use Law Section Rep. (Florida Bar), No. 3 at 1 (March 2014)
  • The Tiff Over TIF: Extending Tax Increment Financing to Municipal Maritime Infrastructure, (with Samantha Culp and Marissa Faerber, 34 Envtl. & Land Use Law Section Rep. (Florida Bar), No. 3 at 1 (2013)
  • A Multidisciplinary Review of Current Sea Level Rise Research in Florida (with Anna Cathey Linhoss, Lisa Gardner Chambers and Kevin Wozniak), Technical Paper 193, University of Florida Institute for Food and Agricultural Sciences (2013)
  • Large Woody Material: Science, Policy and Best Management Practices in Florida Streams (with Linhoss, Cameron A., Hall H., and Blair S.), 75 The Florida Scientist 157 (2012) [SSRN]
  • Comprehensive Sea Grass Restoration In Southwest Florida: Science, Law And Eco-Regional Planning (with A.B. Lingle Hotaling), 4 Sea Grant L. & Pol’y J. 61 (2011) [SSRN]
  • Shared Knowledge; Shared Jurisprudence: Learning to Speak Environmental Law Creole, 16 Tulane J. Envtl. L. 807 (2003).
  • “Inside the Polygon: Emerging Community Tenure Systems and Forest Resource Extraction,” in WORKING FORESTS IN THE TROPICS: CONSERVATION THROUGH SUSTAINABLE MANAGEMENT, (Columbia Presses 2004) (with Grenville Barnes). [SSRN]
  • The Environmental Impacts of International Finance Corporation Lending and Proposals for Reform: A Case Study of Conservation and Oil Development in The Guatemalan Petn, 29 J. Envtl. L. 103 (1999) (with Ian Bowles et al.) [SSRN]

 

University of Florida Levin College of Law
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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.