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For recent alumni and faculty news, read UF LAW alumni magazine or FlaLaw Online, the law school’s weekly electronic newsletter.

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UPCOMING EVENTS

Law Centennial Reunion registration extended to April 10

Time is running out to register for the law school Centennial Celebration and All Classes Reunion on April 24-26. We will continue to accept registration until April 10, so please REGISTER NOW. On our Web site you can now track attendance by clicking on "Who else is coming." It will be a great Gator weekend to be in Gainesville. Both #1 Gator Softball and #23 Gator Baseball will host home stands against SEC foes. Visit www.gatorzone.com for more details on each schedule. Softball admission is always free and law reunion registrants will each receive 2-for-1 admission to the Sunday, April 26, baseball game!

RECENT NEWS

Distinguished alumni to be honored at graduation

Graduation will be Friday, May 15, at 2 p.m. in the O'Connell Center. Four UF Distinguished Alumnus awards will be presented at commencement: Judge Rosemary Barkett, our alumnus on the 11th Circuit and the first woman to serve on the Florida Supreme Court; Dexter Douglass, (JD 55), who has had a distinguished career in Tallahassee and whose service includes chairing the 1997-98 Constitution Revision Commission; Justice-emeritus Ben Overton of the Florida Supreme Court, a member of our adjunct faculty; and George Starke, Jr., who matriculated at the college in 1958 as the first student of color at the University of Florida. Dexter Douglass will be our Commencement speaker, and Professor Mike Seigel has been selected by the students to give the faculty exhortation. Eric Gold, who passed away in January 2008, would have graduated with this class. His parents will be present to receive a posthumous UF Honorary Alumnus designation for Eric.

Levin Advocacy Center building progress

Construction of the Martin H. Levin Advocacy Center is slated to conclude this summer before classes begin for the fall semester. The center is the core of a $6 million construction project that will expand legal advocacy education and provide state-of-the-art trial facilities for the college. Named in honor of Martin H. Levin, son and former colleague of Pensacola attorney and college namesake Fredric G. Levin, the center will put UF Law at the forefront of major law colleges providing students with sophisticated facilities and services.

Annual Fund: Please remember to make your donation before June 30

As we approach the end of the 2008-09 fiscal-year, your contribution to the annual fund is more important than ever. Please remember that each of you can make a difference in the lives of our students and faculty, and that each gift touches on a vast number of programs and people. Please donate today by giving online or calling the Alumni Affairs & Development Office at 352-273-0640. Thank you for your support!

Join Gators for Higher Education

Gators for Higher Education is a group of University of Florida alumni, students, faculty, staff and friends who advocate the university's positions on higher education funding and other issues to our state elected officials. By e-mailing, calling, writing or meeting with Florida’s legislators, GHE communicates the importance of UF's educational, research and community service missions to the state. Become an advocate for the university today - sign up to be a member of Gators for Higher Education. As a member you will receive timely updates on our legislative issues and alerts when we need your help. Membership is free. Gators for Higher Education is a project of UF Government Relations in partnership with the UF Alumni Association.

Constitutional scholar dissects Florida's Bush-Gore "extravaganza"

A handful of judges, several former editors-in-chiefs of the Florida Law Review, and a room full of law school students overfilled the Chesterfield Smith Ceremonial Classroom on March 24. Renowned constitutional scholar Akhil Reed Amar, the Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science at Yale, spoke at the 28th Annual Florida Law Review Dunwody Distinguished Lecture in Law. The lecture was established by the law firms of Dunwody, White & Landon, P.A. and Mershon, Sawyer, Johnston, Dunwody & Cole and the U.S. Sugar Corporation in honor of Elliot and Atwood Dunwody.
Read more >>

UF law professor named to Judicial Nominating Commission for federal posts

A University of Florida professor of law has been tapped to serve on the Florida Judicial Nominating Commission. Nominees recommended by the JNC for federal judges, U.S. attorneys and marshals will be among the first considered by the newly-installed Obama Administration. Jon Mills, a UF Levin College of Law alumni, dean emeritus, professor of law, director for the UF Center for Governmental Responsibility, and former Florida Speaker of the House has accepted an appointment by senators Bill Nelson and Mel Martinez to serve a two-year term on the Florida Judicial Nominating Commission (JNC).
Read more >>

Cahn addresses the complication of familial class and classification

In the beginning of her March 23 lecture, titled “Family Classes,” Naomi Cahn admitted that the title is an intentional double entendre, suggesting both the classification of families under different labels and the social and economic classes that result from financial status and ideological beliefs. Cahn, the John Theodore Fey Research Professor of Law at George Washington University Law School, received her J.D. from Columbia and her B.A. from Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. She spoke at the Levin College of Law as the speaker for the third annual Weyrauch Distinguished Lecture in Family Law, a lecture dedicated to the memory of the late Walter Weyrauch, a Levin College of Law professor and legal scholar.
Read more >>

Social obligation: The court’s new concept for landowners

The right to exclude others from private property is not what it used to be. That was the message recently delivered by Gregory Alexander, a prominent Cornell University land-use law professor and speaker for the Second Annual Wolf Family Lecture in the American Law of Real Property. “U.S. courts are looking at the social responsibility of landowners to provide access for the health and sociability of the public,” Alexander said. “The state of New Jersey is taking the lead on this issue provoking new thoughts on private property and owners’ rights.”
Read more»

CSRRR lecture: "Celebrating Civil Rights in the Age of Obama"

Last fall, in Baltimore County, Maryland, Professor Sherrilyn Ifill’s neighbor debuted a “brand-spanking-new” confederate flag in front of his home. It had been only days since the election of Barack Obama, the first African-American president of the United States. The flag struck a nerve with Ifill, a University of Maryland School of Law professor. She immediately told her husband, “we have to move.” While she later decided that the flag did not warrant relocation, the timing of its display, as well as the emotional distress and pain that the confederate flag still causes for many, revealed an ugly truth about American society post-election: racism is not dead.
Read more»

IRS chief counsel talks tax policy at annual Graduate Tax lecture

If the old adage that death and taxes are the only certain things in the world holds true, then perhaps Clarissa C. Potter, acting chief counsel for the Internal Revenue Service, can boast the ultimate job security. On March 20, Potter presented a lecture to the Levin College of Law titled “Globalization’s Current Challenges to U.S. Tax Policy Makers and Administrators.” Potter, a graduate of Yale Law School and former professor of the Georgetown University Law Center, has held positions in both the Treasury Department’s Office of Tax Policy and the Joint Committee on Taxation of the United States Congress. Potter also practiced with the firm Sullivan & Cromwell in New York. Undoubtedly, her wealth of experience serves her well in her current position with the IRS.
Read more»

PIEC seeks postive change for Florida's environmental woes

The 15th annual Public Interest Environmental Conference (PIEC) gave environmentalists, scientists, lawyers and law students the opportunity to seek solutions to Florida’s environmental woes. The law student-organized conference titled, “Beyond Doom and Gloom: Illuminating a Sustainable Future for Florida,” took place from February 26-28. Michael Willson (2L), co-chair of the conference, felt that it was important for participants to look past salacious headlines about the environment and seek positive changes.
Read more»

Music Law Conference brings together musicians and lawyers

Lawyers, muscians and students from around the nation attended the 2009 Music Law Conference to focus on hot topics in the world of entertainment. The first panel was led by moderator Dean Robert Jerry. He introduced each of the panel members, which included Gary Roth, John Thomas and Mike Wasylik. The panel focused on rights after the death of a musician. Roth, assistant vice president for BMI, used a diagram to explain the rights that musicians have in the music industry while living. He explained some of the essentials of copyright law and emphasized the importance of contracts.
Read more»

Nelson Symposium talks about the squeeze on local governments

The Eighth Annual Richard E. Nelson Symposium brought together top legal experts to discuss challenges and proposed solutions to the multitude of problems faced by local governments. More than 100 legal professionals and law students attended the day-long event, which took place at the UF Hilton Conference Center on Feb. 13. The conference, titled “The Squeeze on Local Governments,” included presentations from experts in topics ranging from land-use, local government, property and environmental law.
Read more»

UF LAW magazine and FlaLaw Online win top honors in campus communication awards

The UF LAW alumni magazine won gold in the annual UF Golden Gator competition. The Golden Gator awards recognize excellence in communications on behalf of the university, honoring those efforts that strengthen the university and help to meet its mission of teaching, research and service. The online version of the magazine won a silver gator, and UF Law's weekly electronic newsletter, FlaLaw Online, also won silver. Be sure to check out the latest issue of UF LAW and leave us feedback by taking the online readership survey.

Faculty Research Electronic Series

The Levin College of Law now distributes an electronic "research paper series" that contains abstracts of new publications and works-in-progress by faculty members, with links for downloading full-text articles. If you would like to receive this electronic series via e-mail (approximately two times per month), please contact Christine Klein, associate dean for faculty development, at kleinc@law.ufl.edu.

April 2009
VOLUME X, ISSUE 2

Events

Law Centennial Reunion registration extended to April 10

Recent News

Distinguished alumni to be honored at graduation

Levin Advocacy Center building progress

Annual Fund: Please remember to make your donation before June 30

Join Gators for Higher Education

Constitutional scholar dissects Florida's Bush-Gore "extravaganza"

UF law professor named to Judicial Nominating Commission for federal posts

Cahn addresses the complication of familial class and classification

Social obligation: The court’s new concept for landowners

CSRRR lecture: "Celebrating Civil Rights in the Age of Obama"

IRS chief counsel talks tax policy at annual Graduate Tax lecture

PIEC seeks postive change for Florida's environmental woes

Music Law Conference brings together musicians and lawyers

Nelson Symposium talks about the squeeze on local governments

UF LAW magazine and FlaLaw Online win top honors in campus communication awards

Faculty Research Electronic Series

Links

UF Calendar of Events

Contact Us

UF Law eNews is produced by the Levin College of Law Communications Office.

Communications Coordinator, Editor: Katie Blasewitz
Director: Debra Amirin
Associate Director, UF Law Magazine Editor: Lindy Brounley
Online Communications Coordinator: Matthew Gonzalez
Senior Writer: Scott Emerson
Photography: Charles Roop, Lauren Jannelle, Joshua Lukman

Send submissions and/or suggestions to eNews editor Katie Blasewitz at blasewitz@law.ufl.edu or
352-273-0650.

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