Levin College of Law
Welcome to UF LAW

Timothy McLendon

Senior Legal Skills Professor

CV

bepress (SelectedWorks)

Phone:
(352) 273-0835

Expertise

Bill of Rights  • Constitutional Law  • Florida Constitution  • Fourteenth Amendment  • Legal Writing  • 

About

Timothy McLendon works as a Senior Legal Skills Professor at the University of Florida Levin College of Law. His research has involved Everglades restoration policies, oil spill response and recovery, local land use law, sustainable development, historic preservation law, Florida constitutional law, and international environmental law. He is the author of a handbook on Florida historic preservation law, and has lectured on that subject for the Florida Trust for Historic Preservation. He directed a USAID-funded project working with Colombian law schools on human rights from 2012-15, coordinating visits and training sessions. He participated in USIA-funded mediation and dispute resolution projects in Haiti from 1996-2003. He has participated in training programs for Brazilian judges and prosecutors in comparative environmental and land use law in 1996, 2000-16. He has also researched legal and constitutional issues for the Florida Constitution Revision Commission in 1997-98, and the Florida Supreme Court’s Committee on Privacy and Court Records from 2003-05. He served on the Florida Supreme Court’s Committee on Access to Court Records, 2006-09. He teaches Florida Constitutional and Historic Preservation Law and an interdisciplinary seminar on Law and Policy Issues in the Americas at the University of Florida College of Law. He has taught European Union Law in the Department of Political Science, and has lectured on comparative constitutional and land use law issues in Brazil, Peru, Colombia and Poland.

A member of the Florida Bar, Professor McLendon’s practice in state and federal courts has included issues relating to constitutional law, privacy rights, open government, environmental and education law, as well as initiative amendments to the Florida Constitution.

Education

A.B., Duke University, 1989
J.D., University of Florida, 1994

Teaching & Scholarship

Comparative & Florida Constitutional Law, Historic Preservation Law

Courses

  • Historic Preservation
  • Legal Writing
  • Legal Writing II – Persuasive Writing

Publications

  • Florida Constitutional Law: Cases in Context (Carolina Academic Press 2021) (with Mary Adkins and Jon L. Mills) [Link]
  • 2021 Latin American Business Environment Report (22nd ed., University of Florida, Center for Latin American Studies) (with Brian Gendreau & Pilar Uesche)
  • 2020 Latin American Business Environment Report (21st ed., University of Florida, Center for Latin American Studies) (with Brian Gendreau)
  • 2019 Latin American Business Environment Report (20th ed., University of Florida, Center for Latin American Studies) (with Brian Gendreau)
  • “Law Schools as Agents of Change and Justice Reform in the Americas,” (with Jon Mills) 20 Fla. J. Int’l L. 5 2008
  • “Institutional and Political Development of the European Union: A Context for the 2004 European Parliamentary Elections,” in The European Union Expansion: Communicating Shared Sovereignty in the Parliamentary Elections. Lynda Lee Kaid, ed., 2008
  • “Summary of Florida Historic Preservation Law,” in Treatise of Florida Environmental & Land Use Law. Florida Bar, 2000, 2008.

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.