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Lyrissa Lidsky Joins Florida Law as Ehrlich Chair in Constitutional Law

The University of Florida Levin College of Law is pleased to announce Professor Lyrissa Lidsky will join the UF Law faculty as a Raymond & Miriam Ehrlich Chair in U.S. Constitutional Law starting in August 2022.

Lidsky returns to the Florida Law faculty, where she taught from 1994-2017, after serving as Dean of the University of Missouri School of Law for the past five years. Among many other achievements, Lidsky increased enrollment at Missouri by more than 50 percent, including raising the credentials of incoming students each year and increasing the percentage of women to the highest level in school history. She also improved job placement and funding for the college, including securing the largest gift in school history. In addition to serving as dean, Lidsky also continued to teach and write, focusing on the intersection of Tort Law and the First Amendment, with an emphasis on free speech issues in social media.

Lidsky’s scholarship includes a leading Media Law casebook, a First Amendment casebook, a reference book on press freedom, and dozens of articles, including a recent article on threats in social media in California Law Review, with UF Law alum Linda Riedemann Norbut. In the last six months, Lidsky has presented her new article on defamation reform at Yale Law School’s Freedom of Expression Scholars’ Conference and University of California Irvine Law’s Defamation and Philosophy Conference. The fourth edition of her First Amendment Law casebook (with Krotosznski, Jr., Corbin, and Zick) is forthcoming. Her work on anonymous speech has been cited by a number of state supreme courts and the highest courts of Canada and Hong Kong.

Since 2019, Lidsky has served as the Co-Reporter for the American Law Institute’s Restatement of Defamation & Privacy. She has also won various teaching awards during her nearly 30-year teaching career.

Before becoming a law professor, Lidsky served as a clerk for the Honorable Joseph T. Sneed of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco. Before law school, she was a Fulbright Scholar at Cambridge University in England, studying medieval legal history and early development of the Common Law.

Lidsky received her bachelor’s degree, summa cum laude, in English and political science from Texas A&M University and her law degree from the University of Texas School of Law with high honors.

Published: May 17th, 2022

Category: News

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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.