FlaLaw » 2001 » April » 16

Key Private, Governmental Environmentalists Featured at Annual Law Conference

wsmitty@ufl.edu — Mon, 16 Apr 2001 21:45:15 +0000

Fifty participants from national and state environmental law firms, government agencies, colleges, private companies and environmental groups were featured at the law school’s Seventh Annual Public Interest Environmental Conference March 22-24. Among speakers at one of the panels, “Ethical Advocates’ Boot Camp,” were Laurie Macdonald, Florida Director of Defenders of Wildlife; David Schwartz, Assistant Alachua County Attorney; and Gary Appelson, Caribbean Conservation Corporation Advocacy Coordinator. Professor Alyson Flournoy, Director of the law school’s Environmental & Land Use Law Program, notes that “panels such as this created an educational and entertaining forum in which lawyers and nonlawyer scientists and activists learned nuts-and-bolts skills to use in lobbying decision-makers and dealing with the media.” Flournoy complimented student members of the law school’s Environmental and Land Use Society for organizing this year’s event, including conference Co-Chairmen Matt Hicks and David Migut, and cited Providance Nagy and Kelly Samek for working with Schwartz to develop the advocacy panel. Featured speakers included John Henry Hankinson, immediate past Region IV Environmental Protection Agency Administrator; Mary Doyle, immediate past U.S. Department of Interior Deputy Assistant Secretary; and Herb Hiller, Floridian and long-time travel writer.

Law School Returns To USN&WR Top Tier

wsmitty@ufl.edu — Mon, 16 Apr 2001 21:43:28 +0000

After a one-year absence evidently caused in part by measurements in two categories, the Fredric G. Levin College of Law returns to a top tier ranking for 2001 by U.S. News & World Report. “We feel good about returning to the top tier (47th of 174 law schools accredited by the American Bar Association),” noted Interim Dean Jon Mills. “We actually expect to continue to climb higher, and to meet our goal of being one of the top 10 public law schools in the U.S.” The law school’s Graduate Tax program continued to be ranked number two. Complete rankings and details can be found at www.usnews.com, but highlights of the UF rating included improvement in student/faculty ratio and percent of students employed nine months after graduation — two categories in which the school received lower scores in 2000. Mills said he and other law school administrators agree with the Law School Admission Council, which is quoted as saying it is wary of the magazine’s “arbitrary” annual rankings because “not all of a prospective student’s concerns (about a law school) — such as breadth of curriculum, externship options, quality of teaching and diversity” are considered. “I share a lot of feelings expressed by LSAC,” Mills said. “There are fine law schools not ranked, plus prospective law students need to be encouraged to consider their own interests, goals and priorities when applying to a school.” USN&WR rankings are based on a weighted average of “12 measures of quality,” including a school’s reputation as determined by surveys conducted by Market Facts, Inc., of law school deans and faculty members, lawyers, hiring partners and senior judges.

Faculty in the spotlight: Jonathan Cohen

wsmitty@ufl.edu — Mon, 16 Apr 2001 21:42:10 +0000

Professor Jonathan Cohen has two publications forthcoming this spring: “When People are the Means: Negotiating with Respect,” in the Georgetown Journal of Legal Ethics, and a book review, “Holistic Lawyering: ‘Transforming Practices’ Advances Dialogue on Spirtuality in Law Practice” in Dispute Resolution Magazine.

Faculty in the spotlight: Juan Perea

wsmitty@ufl.edu — Mon, 16 Apr 2001 21:40:34 +0000

Professor Juan Perea will be a Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School during Spring 2002. He has completed a book chapter, “Fulfilling Manifest Destiny: Conquest, Race, and the Insular Cases,” that soon will appear in Foreign in a Domestic Sense (Christina Burnett & Burke Marshall, eds.) (Duke U. Press 2001).

Faculty in the spotlight: Lyrissa Lidsky

wsmitty@ufl.edu — Mon, 16 Apr 2001 21:38:54 +0000

Professor Lyrissa Lidsky has been selected to receive a University of Florida Research Foundation three-year professorship award.

Law Students in International Competition

wsmitty@ufl.edu — Mon, 16 Apr 2001 21:36:04 +0000

A five-member law school team was in Vienna, Austria, last week (April 6 -13) for the Eighth Annual Willem C. Vis International Commercial Arbitration Moot (ICAM). UF participants in the competition, designed to foster the study of international commercial law and arbitration in business disputes, were chosen based on briefs and oral arguments conducted in conjunction with a one-year independent study course supervised by Professor Thomas Hurst. This is the third year UF students participated in the event. “The competition was rewarding for our students,” said Hurst, the team’s advisor. “It gives them an opportunity to compete against students, and argue before judges, trained in legal systems quite different from our own. This is invaluable for students planning a career in international commercial law.” During the competition, UF law students faced teams from 94 universities representing 31 different countries. Participating U.S. universities, in addition to UF, include Brigham Young, Columbia, Cornell, Loyola, Harvard and Rutgers. Participating schools from abroad included Université d’ Aix-Marseille III (France), Albert-Ludwigs- University (Germany), Ankara University (Turkey), University of Maastricht (Netherlands), and Mari State University (Russia). The Vis ICAM is sponsored by the American Arbitration Association, the International Arbitral Centre of the Austrian Federal Economic Chamber, the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators, the International Chamber of Commerce, the London Court of International Arbitration, the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law, and the University of Vienna (Austria) Faculty of Law.