Whitney Untiedt, Equal Justice Works AmeriCorps attorney for Three Rivers, said Charney (pictured above) was brought to the law school to talk to the volunteers about the issues facing low-income communities and how law student volunteers can make a difference in their community. She said the students will be presenting to such groups as Peaceful Paths Domestic Abuse Network, housing authority groups and migrant workers. Charney, who has been in practice for 28 years, urged students to get involved with volunteering as early in their law career as possible.

Charney’s presentation capitalized on recent issues in consumer law in light of the current economy crisis, including credit card debt, mortgage foreclosures, rent-to-own, and payday loan businesses.

“I see a change in our country that is scaring the hell out of me,” Charney said of the current economic outlook. Charney said the most frustrating thing in her job is dealing with the legislature to explain issues with respect to foreclosures. She explained this when she told a story of how Florida’s CFO had no idea how to stem the tide of homeowners losing their homes and came to Charney for advice.

“This is economic HIV because we are all infected,” Charney said. “We are all at risk. We truly are facing a big crisis in our country.”

Students interested in getting involved with the Rural Outreach Project should cotact Unitiedt whitney.untiedt@trls.org or call Three Rivers Legal Services at (352) 372-0519.

To ensure that the government’s use of this powerful tool is not abused, Slobogin argues, something equally powerful—the Constitution, and in particular the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution—must stand guard. While much has been written in recent years about electronic surveillance, Slobogin’s book focuses on significant new developments in the government’s use of technology, developments designed to observe our daily activities through physical surveillance and to peruse records of those activities through transactional surveillance.

While some of these technologically enhanced investigative techniques have been around for years, most are recent in origin, and their use by law enforcement officials has increased dramatically in the years following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

Since 9/11, the Bush Administration has pushed very aggressively in two different areas—camera surveillance and data mining. The government has provided millions of dollars to cities and municipalities for the purpose of setting up sophisticated camera systems, which allow the police to zoom in on street activity at night as well as during the day. Significant resources have also been poured into establishing data mining programs, where dozens of government agencies have used the power of the computer and the ability to access records through the internet and through commercial data brokers to obtain personal information about American citizens as well as foreigners.

“The Supreme Court of the United States and the court system generally are not involved in overseeing this new surveillance, not so much because of a power grab by the executive branch, but because the courts themselves have taken the judiciary out of the game,” Slobogin says. “The Supreme Court has held that, in essence, we don’t have privacy in public, so the cameras that watch what we do in the streets aren’t governed by the Constitution and not subject to judicial monitoring. It has also held that any information that we give to third parties such as banks or schools or businesses or even doctors is no longer protected by the Fourth Amendment or the courts; the Court says that we’ve essentially waved our Fourth Amendment protection when we decided to give information to a third party. So in both of those areas the Constitution is pretty much a dead letter.”

Today there are over 200 government data mining programs in operation, over 120 of which gather some type of personal information that can be connected to a particular individual, Slobogin says. These data mining programs, he explains, gather huge amounts of information about people, trolling through financial records, travel records, and medical records, all with the goal of identifying patterns of behavior that might reveal terrorist or criminal activity.

“Privacy concerns seem to be very secondary to the government when it’s engaging in these kinds of surveillance programs,” Slobogin says. “While Congress or the executive branch has ended some efforts, there always seem to be new programs that crop up to take the place of the previous program. So until the government runs out of money I think we’re going to continue to see these data mining endeavors, even though they tend to be very ineffective, and even though they can potentially gather huge amounts of personal information about people.”

Slobogin was interviewed recently about the book for HarperOnline and a National Public Radio call-in show. As a result of his work in the area he has consulted with the Department of Homeland Security about camera surveillance and was asked to serve on an ABA Task Force established to devise rules governing transaction surveillance.

In his book, Slobogin argues that the decisions that have led us to this point need to be reversed or reinterpreted to permit much more significant regulation of both physical and transactional surveillance. “This book is meant to prod legislatures and courts into more meaningful constraints on physical and transaction surveillance,” Slobogin says. “While these types of surveillance may be different from both classic searches and from communications surveillance in some senses, in their current minimally regulated state they do real harm to individual interests and ultimately to society and government itself. That state of affairs must change.”

The conference, entitled “Green Building: Prospects and Pitfalls for Local Governments,” examined topics including the legal landscape of green building, Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) and other certification programs, the state of Florida’s climate change initiatives and private environmental lawmaking.

Green building construction is an integrated design that is environmentally responsible, profitable in the long term and creates a healthy place to live and work. This high performance building construction helps to alleviate our carbon footprint caused by making everyday decisions that increase greenhouse gas emissions, Bahar Armaghani, assistant director at UF’s Facilities Planning & Construction Division, said.

When analyzing state and local climate change initiatives it is important for government agencies to be on the cutting edge. Kristen Engel, University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law professor, urged government agencies to be proactive in the race to become green.

“State and local governmental don’t just need to reduce emissions, they need to push ahead of technology,” she said. “State governments should mandate the adoption of better technologies.”

This is the seventh symposium honoring Richard E. Nelson—who served with distinction as Sarasota County attorney for 30 years—and Jane Nelson, two UF alumni who gave more than $1 million to establish the Richard E. Nelson Chair in Local Government Law, which sponsors the annual event. Their support of the Levin College of Law’s Environmental and Land Use Program has been key to the program’s success and national recognition for excellence.

Merrill is the Charles Keller Beekman Professor of Law at Columbia Law School in New York, where he has been a member of the faculty since 2003. He previously taught at Northwestern University School of Law. From 1987 to 1990 he served as deputy solicitor general in the Department of Justice, where he represented the United States before the U.S. Supreme Court. He previously practiced law with Sidley, Austin, Brown & Wood in Chicago, where he continues to serve as a consultant on appellate litigation, constitutional law, regulated industries, and environmental law.

Merrill earned bachelor’s degrees from Grinnell College in Iowa and Oxford University in England prior to enrolling in the University of Chicago Law School, where he earned his J.D. cum laude in 1977. Following graduation from law school, Merrill was law clerk to United States Supreme Court Associate Justice Harry A. Blackmun, as well as United States Court of Appeals Chief Judge David L. Bazelon.

The lecture series was endowed by a gift from UF Law Professor Michael Allan Wolf and his wife Betty. Wolf, the Richard E. Nelson Chair in Local Government Law, is the general editor of a 17-volume treatise, Powell on Real Property, the most utilized treatise in the country in the area, which is cited regularly by the courts, including several recent citations in the United States Supreme Court. The treatise is a legal source that lawyers, law professors and judges have relied upon for over half a century.

“My wife and I envision that the gift will enable the Levin College of Law to bring leading real property experts to share ideas with our impressive law school community,” Wolf said. “The text of each lecture will be published in the Powell treatise, which will enable the ideas to reach even a wider audience of practitioners, judges, and academics. We also want to expose these outstanding lecturers to all the great things we have at our law school, especially our faculty, students, and staff. In this way, the gift will further enhance UF’s already outstanding reputation.”

UF Law Dean Robert Jerry said, “The Wolf Family Lecture on the American Law of Real Property will provide a forum for leading academic experts on American real property law to present their ideas not only to our students but also to a national and international audience. We are delighted that the Wolf Family chose to create this significant series, and we are very excited about Professor Merrill’s inaugural lecture in February.”

Kim, who worked on the Journal of Law and Public Policy during his time at UF Law, says his current jobs allows him to work on more types of law than what most firms offer to their new associates.

“There is definitely a diverse practice because we do lots of different things with interesting fields of law,” he said. “In any given day I get to work on operational law, law of troop engagement, domestic law enforcement such as federal prosecution of drug and migrant traffickers and environmental crimes.”

Being an officer in the JAG program offers a unique experience every day, such as wearing uniforms and staying in shape to meet military standards, Kim said.

“It’s a different environment from a normal law firm because we wear a uniform to work every day, and often get to go out in the field,” he said. “At the same time there are similarities because we do research case law and write memos for court.”

In addition to wearing uniforms and working with military issues, Kim says another great aspect of the JAG program is the discipline factor when it comes to meeting a goal.

“I love the program because I do well in an independent environment, and we do not do billable hours here,” he said. “The Coast Guard is all about taking responsibility, managing time well, being organized and getting results.”

JAG officers get to work with the most recent issues in law around the world, Kim said.

“Officers get to work on very interesting cases, such as defending Guantanamo Bay detainees, going to Iraq and going to Afghanistan,” he said. “Sometimes my fellow officers have to go to these places around the world on very short notice.”

A big advantage of being a JAG officer, is the ability to get strong experience right out of school, which becomes very appealing to hiring firms, Kim said.

“JAG officers are always getting lucrative offers from firms later in their careers,” he said. “Firms appreciate the level of discipline, and the JAG officer’s ability to not be intimidated and get things done.”

For current law students, Kim says the JAG option is something very competitive that they should look into.

“There are five JAG branches that students can look into, and the reality is that the JAG corps is tremendously competitive,” he said. “There are several hundred applicants every year, so do research and gain knowledge of what you want to do.”

The 6th Annual UF Music Law Conference, held on Feb. 16 in the Chesterfield Ceremonial classroom, explored 360 degrees of the music industry and how the music business is integrated with everything from film, television and changing technologies to music sharing and merchandising.

The Live Music Showcase hosted on Friday night at Side Bar gave everyone involved with the conference a chance to sit back and mingle with people from the industry while enjoying different genres of music.

The conference titled, “Music & Mixed Media,” was organized into five panels which focused on entertainment markets, ethics, protecting rights, new distribution and commercial markets. Two of the five past Music Law Conference directors served on these panels. Brian Frankel (JD 07) and Mencher discussed the entertainment markets and ethics involved with being a successful young lawyers in the business. Also attending the conference were past directors Jason Gordon (JD 04) and Andrew Kanter (JD 06). (Pictured below from left to right: Gerard Kardonsky, Brian Frankel, Andrew Kanter, Jason Gordon and Brian Mencher)

Whether the panelists were attorneys, musicians or businesses executives, it was clear that their passion for protecting and creating music was the driving force. All of the panelists emphasized the importance of networking, establishing relationships and not being afraid to take chances.

“It’s the people you know who will get you the jobs,” said Frankel, who is an attorney working in D.C. and past director of the 2007 Music Law Conference. He emphasized the importance of location in the industry and getting involved with volunteering. Frankel said the most important piece of advice is to learn to barter with clients stating, “getting paid is not nearly as important as getting known.”

Director Gerard Kardonsky said he was very pleased with the turnout that attracted an excellent crowd from diverse backgrounds. “I am sure that everyone regardless of whether they are musicians, business owners, lawyers or students all left a little bit more prepared to deal with their futures in entertainment,” he said. “The panels where extremely stimulating and provocative this year.”

The director of Legal & Business Affairs for EMI Televisa Music, Oswaldo Rossi, served as the keynote speaker for this year’s conference. Nick Nanton, a UF Law graduated and award-winning songwriter also served as a panelist for “New Distribution.” Dean Robert Jerry, Associate Dean Kathie Price, Professor Andy Adkins, Dean Rachel Inman and Professor Elizabeth Rowe served as moderators for the panels.