This political cartoon of "The Gerry-Mander," from which gerrymandering got its name, was first published in the Boston Centinel in 1812. The cartoon illustrates an electoral district in Essex County, Massachusetts drawn to favor the re-election of Governor Elbridge Gerry.

To many Floridians, tasking elected representatives to draw nonpartisan voting districts seems a lot like tasking the fox to guard the henhouse…every 10 years feathers fly.

“Reapportionment, or how we divide our districts for the Legislature and Congress, is one of the most important things we do because it determines who you can vote for in your district,” said Jon Mills, UF professor of law, dean emeritus and director of the Levin College of Law Center for Governmental Responsibility.

Mills said Florida’s constitution directs the Legislature to review and redraw voting districts in the second year after each U.S. Census. The constitutional ideal of reapportionment is to draw districts to fairly represent the state’s population growth or movement. Unfortunately, legislators have historically used the opportunity to redistrict voting blocks to shore up re-election for themselves or their party. This history of gerrymandered reapportionment has resulted in legislators, both Democrats and Republicans, supporting redistricting that effectively splits votes down partisan lines.

“When I was in the Legislature, I sat on a reapportionment committee. Were people drawing districts to favor themselves or their political party? Absolutely,” said Mills. “There is a mutual self-interest in members of a legislative body to help each other that doesn’t necessarily favor one party or the other.”

Mills is now serving as counsel on a legal team representing FairDistrictsFlorida.org that includes CGR staff attorney Tim McLendon. The organization is the sponsor of a constitutional amendment to set standards the Legislature must use when redrawing district boundaries.

The title and summary of the amendment, which was argued before the Florida Supreme Court Nov. 6 as Case No. SC08-1149, reads:

STANDARDS FOR LEGISLATURE TO FOLLOW IN CONGRESSIONAL REDISTRICTING
Congressional districts or districting plans may not be drawn to favor or disfavor an incumbent or political party. Districts shall not be drawn to deny racial or language minorities the equal opportunity to participate in the political process and elect representatives of their choice. Districts must be contiguous. Unless otherwise required, districts must be compact, as equal in population as feasible, and where feasible must make use of existing city, county and geographical boundaries.

The primary goal of the amendment — if the Supreme Court approves it as a ballot measure for a 2010 general election — is to establish nonpartisan reapportionment standards by which districts would be drawn. These standards would seek to assure continuity in redistricting so that boundaries are contiguous and compact, preventing district lines from being drawn in such a way that cherry-picks and patches together disparate areas that reliably vote one way or the other.

When districts are drawn to embrace contiguous communities, they include a broader range of constituencies and are not strictly split by racial or partisan lines. The theory is that legislators and congressmen elected to office from such districts would be less partisan and more balanced in their views, resulting in an approach to government that is less divisive and more representative, Mills said.

“I think there are people of good will on both sides of the aisle who really want to see the process be as transparent and fair as possible,” said Stephen N. Zack (JD 71), a partner in the Miami firm Boies, Schiller & Flexner, which also represents FairDistrictsFlorida.org. “Obviously, there are others who just want to win, and that is not the standard by which we should want to have an election.”

(Photo courtsey of Clemson University Institute of Family and Neighborhood Life)

The Center on Children & Families presents Dr. Gary Melton on “What’s Wrong with U.S. Child Protection Policy, and How Might It Be Fixed?” on Nov. 24, at noon in the Chesterfield Smith Ceremonial Classroom (HOL 180).

Gary B. Melton is director of the Institute of Family and Neighborhood Life and professor of psychology at Clemson University. A Fellow of the American Psychological Association (APA) and 10 of its divisions, Melton is a past president of the American Orthopsychiatric Association, the American Psychology-Law Society, the APA Division of Child, Youth, and Family Services, and Childwatch International, a global research network sponsored by the Norwegian government.

Among other public and professional service, Melton has served as a member of the U.S. Advisory Board on Child Abuse and Neglect, the U.S. Attorney General’s Expert Panel on Youth Violence, the APA Working Group on Child Abuse and Neglect, the APA Committee on International Relations in Psychology, the American Bar Association (ABA) Commission on Mental and Physical Disability Law, the ABA and APA working groups on the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Institute of Medicine committee on training of health professionals about family violence, the National Research Council panel on elder mistreatment, and the national and state boards of Parents Anonymous.

Melton has testified several times before the U.S. Congress, and he has served as a consultant to numerous state social service, mental health, legislative, and court-administrative agencies. As director of the Consortium on Children, Families, and the Law, a national network of policy research centers, he co-organized a long-standing Congressional briefing series. Prof. Melton’s work has been cited by U.S. courts at all levels, and he was the principal architect of the new national child protection strategy proposed by the U.S. Advisory Board on Child Abuse and Neglect.

The author of approximately 300 publications, Prof. Melton has published or is currently writing or editing books on diverse topics of child and family policy and psychology, including child research; children’s law; pediatric AIDS; forensic mental health services; child advocacy; rural psychology; research ethics; children’s competence; the law’s effects on behavior; motivation in family relationships; use of social science research in legal reform; child mental health policy; child protection policy; and international developments in child and family policy. He has served on the editorial board of more than 25 journals and book series.

Melton has lectured, consulted, or conducted research in approximately 40 countries and territories abroad, and much of his work in recent years has focused on the application of international human rights law to child and family policy. He was a Fulbright professor at the Norwegian Center for Child Research.

Melton has held faculty appointments at the Universities of Hawaii, Minnesota, Nebraska, South Carolina, and Virginia and at Morehead (Kentucky) State University. He is currently a research fellow in the Centre for Psychology and Law at the University of the Free State in South Africa. (Biography courtesy of Clemson University Institute of Family and Neighborhood Life).

Pamela Schneider (JD 79) spoke to students about the benefits of collaborative divorces on Nov. 14 in the Bailey Courtroom. (UF Law/ Matthew Gonzalez)

From litigating divorces to fighting child custody battles, family law attorneys who handle dissolutions of marriage are arguably held in public opinion as some of the most adversarial and disfavored lawyers in the legal field. An alternative to traditional courtroom fights to the death, however, seeks to change that.

Pamela Schneider (JD 79), adjunct professor and longtime divorce attorney, visited the Levin College of Law on Nov. 14 to educate students on the benefits of collaborative divorces as opposed to the familiar adversarial system.

The goal, she says, is to facilitate a cooperative environment among the parties, two attorneys, one or two mental health professionals trained in divorce coaching, and a neutral financial advisor so that the parties’ dignity and composure are preserved so they may effectively co-parent after the divorce.

Schneider said that often, after a long, drawn out, no-holds-barred adversarial divorce, “these people can’t even look at each other, let alone co-parent the children.”

She emphasized the impact that divorces have on the children involved in a divorce – no matter if the children are infants or adults.

“The problem for children isn’t getting the divorce, but how the parents treat each other afterwards,” she explained.

If one or both parties are not willing to settle their case with a collaborative divorce, however, Schneider said that both attorneys must withdraw from representing their respective clients and the clients must begin the process anew, hiring new attorneys and preparing for a potentially lengthy and painful legal battle.

While many skeptics have expressed worries that the cost of a collaborative divorce may be too high as a result of clients paying two mental health professionals as well as a financial advisor, Schneider explained how a collaborative divorce is often less expensive, and the cost of starting a new case after refusing to proceed with a collaborative divorce is often a helpful motive in keeping both parties dedicated to the collaborative process.

Additionally, collaborative divorces require less paperwork and fewer filings, so the attorneys spend fewer hours working on each case, thereby saving their clients money.

The final result, Schneider said, is usually far better for all parties than in an adversarial divorce. Often, after a lengthy divorce and custody battle, proceedings are rushed in order to meet a deadline set by a judge and both parties in an adversarial divorce emerge mentally battered and emotionally broken, with a newfound or greater contempt for the other party. In a collaborative divorce, the parties set their own timeline and are ushered into the healing process and are prepared for the future in a far more gentle, cooperative way.

The ultimate goal, she said, is that “we want to get these people divorced in such a way that when their children get married, they can dance together at the wedding.”

At this point in time, you should be organizing and reviewing the outlines you have created for all of your classes. At the same time, if your professor provides any advice or instructions as to how to prepare for his or her exam, follow those instructions.

Each professor is different in how they teach and what they expect from their students. If you are being taught by Professor A, then you may not study or prepare for Professor B’s exam in the same way, as Professor B may have different expectations and vice versa.

Pay attention to how your professor teaches and what they stress in class as this will assist you in your preparation and focus for that class. If your professor spent several days or even a week or so on a topic, know that topic because it will likely be on the exam.

Also, know the kind of exams your professor usually gives. Make copies of exams on file (you may find copies of old exams from various professors with JMBA) and use these exams to study and practice taking the examination. However, do not try to write the answer to an exam question too early in the process as this may provoke anxiety. Instead, work through the parts of the question and problems which refer to the portion of the course material you have already studied.

Now, in terms of studying, as mentioned above, you should be reviewing your course outlines by now. When you start studying from your outline, you should be reading the entire document (no matter how long). As your examination draws closer, you want to make your outline shorter.

As a first step, you may want to develop a list of topics/headers. Look at how your course syllabus is organized, which will leave you with the organizational concepts that your professor has covered and most likely finds to be the most pertinent for the course. Once you have your topics, remove case references and hypotheticals from your outline.

In doing so, you will have created a “skeletal outline.” This does not mean you will not need the information you have removed from your extensive outline; instead, you should be able to recall this “check-list” of important case law, rules of law, policies and basic concepts by simply looking at the general topics. These details or “checklist” of the concepts will assist you when it is time for you to take the actual examination.

In addition to the preparation details above, keep in mind the following details over the next few weeks as you prepare for the end of the semester:

• Set a study schedule, but remember to schedule breaks as needed.
• Eat a well-balanced diet: Not eating when you should or not eating well can affect your concentration and your overall health. This is not conducive for productive study sessions.
• Exercise, socialize and participate in your regular leisure activities. This will help alleviate the stress and anxiety of finals, both before and during.
• Get plenty of sleep. This cannot be emphasized enough. Lack of sleep hinders your alertness and the ability for you to concentrate and to recall information. Thus, if you think studying all night is going to help you ingest more information, re-evaluate this plan. Sleep allows for your body and mind to rest and repair itself so that you are prepared to continue studying and increase your abilities to store and recall information.

Next week’s installment of “Examination Preparation” will focus on your plan during the exam. Keep in mind that preparing for the examination period is like a marathon; you must train and pace yourself for the ultimate race. As long as you prepare for it adequately, you will have enough energy to complete the process and do so successfully.

For additional information on exam preparation or any questions about coping with stress and time management that will assist you in this upcoming examination period, contact Assistant Dean of Students Kari Mattox at mattoxk@law.ufl.edu.