The Documentary Institute at the University of Florida and The Florida Governor’s Office of Film and Entertainment cordially invite you to a film screening of At The Death House Door on Friday, March 20, at 5:30 p.m. in Gannett Auditorium located on the first floor of Weimer Hall. This award-winning documentary takes an intimate look at the death penalty in the state of Texas through the eyes of the Rev. Carroll Pickett, who served 15 years as chaplain for the inmates of the infamous “Walls” prison unit in Huntsville where he witnessed nearly 100 executions. The film, directed by Steve James and Peter Gilbert (“Hoop Dreams”) chronicles Pickett’s transformation as a death penalty supporter to staunch opponent. READ MORE»

Music Night 2009 hosted by Dean Jerry

Got a hidden musical talent? Show it off at the upcoming Music Night 2009, to be held Sunday, March 29, at 7 p.m. at the home of Dean Bob Jerry and his wife Lisa. All students and faculty are invited — but the “ticket” to attend is that you must bring a dessert and agree to perform a musical piece (play an instrument or sing a song). A piano will be available. Each participant can bring one guest. Space is limited, so sign up is on a first-come, first-serve basis. To register, stop by the Dean’s Office and see Doris Perron.

Former U.S. Senator and Florida Governor Bob Graham and Former Costa Rican Presidential Candidate and University of Florida Bacardi Eminent Scholar Otton Solis to lecture in Costa Rica Program

Former U.S. Senator Bob Graham who recently established the Graham Center for Public Service at the University of Florida will join the UF/UCR Costa Rica Program for in class and public lectures in July. Graham has been a champion of environmental policy throughout his career and during his tenure as Governor began the effort to restore the Greater Everglades Ecosystem. He recently worked with the UF Law Conservation Clinic on a petition to UNESCO to relist Everglades National Park as an endangered World Heritage Site, in part due to climate change, a cause championed by his successor Senator Bill Nelson. Otton Solis is a former minister of planning and the Economy in Costa Rica and founded the Citizen’s Action Party of Costa Rica, which rose to challenge the dominant two party system in Costa Rica. Solis lost a closely contested presidential election in 2006. In 2008 he spent a semester at the University of Florida as the Eminent Scholar in Latin American Studies where he taught a course on trade agreements. He will teach a module on trade and the environment in Costa Rica.

ABA National Appellate Advocacy Competition teams dominate Boston regional

The respondent team of Dante Trevisani, Charlie Roberson and Rob Davis survived five rounds of competition in the ABA National Appellate Advocacy Competition’s Boston Regional. As a result the respondent team will advance to the NAAC Finals in Chicago this April. The respondent team, coached by Amelia Williams, also won the fifth best brief award for the region. The petitioner’s team of Jennifer Jones, Michael Friedman and Andrew Hoffman were ranked first coming out of the preliminary rounds and made it to the final round in the regional competition. The petitioner’s team, coached by Ryan Eastmoore, won the second best brief award for the region. Michael Friedman won the third best advocate award and Jennifer Jones won the eighth best advocate award for the region. The issues in this year’s competition included the separation of powers, standing, and the president’s war powers under the Commander in Chief Clause of the U.S. Constitution. (Photo from left: Michael Friedman, Dante Trevisani, Ryan Eastmoore, Charlie Roberson, Rob Davis, and Jennifer Jones. Not pictured: Andrew Hoffman and Amelia Williams)

Time is running out to apply for financial aid

For those of you who have not already done so, now is the time to apply for aid for the 2009-2010 academic year. I encourage you to apply by April 1 using FAFSA on the Web. Just go to http://www.fafsa.ed.gov and follow the instructions on the site. After applying via FAFSA/Renewal FAFSA on the Web, you can check the status of your application and/or make corrections online. You will need to use your Federal Access Code (PIN) to complete the 2009-2010 FAFSA.

Military Justice team wins second place

The team of Lorna Cobb, Shelly Garg, Philip Moring and Gustav Schmidt won second place in the Military Justice Moot Court Competition held at Naval Air Station Jacksonville, Fla. during the last week of February. This competition focused on an emerging military justice issue and required competitors to learn provisions of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. The team argued in front of current naval military judges, including the chief judge of the Navy-Marine Corps Court of Criminal Appeals. Overall, the competition simulated the Navy JAG experience. Aside from hosting the competition, the Navy provided competitors with the opportunity to operate a flight simulator and tour a Navy frigate ship. (Photo from left: Shelly Garg, Gustav Schmidt, Lorna Cobb, Philip Moring)

Financial aid for Florida Bar prep and exam

Are you making plans to take the Bar and wondering where you will come up with the financing necessary for these out-of-pocket expenses? There are private loan companies who will make Bar exam loans to students who are in their final year of law school. These loans can be used for a student’s living expenses while studying for the Bar, Bar prep classes and other Bar related expenses.

Sallie Mae
1-800-984-0190
www.salliemae.com

Wells Fargo
(To apply, student would need to have some type of account/loan with Wells Fargo)
1-800-378-5526
www.wellsfargo.com/student/

For more information contact Financial Aid Coordinator Carol Huber at 352-273-0620.

“I’m honored to be selected to give this year’s Weyrauch Lecture” said Professor Cahn. “Professor Weyrauch was a distinguished teacher, scholar and intellectual role model in numerous fields, and his work in family law has inspired the topic of my lecture.”

Professor Cahn is the John Theodore Fey Research Professor of Law at The George Washington University School of Law. She is a senior fellow at the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute and is a member of the Yale Cultural Cognition Project. Professor Cahn has written numerous law review articles on family law, and has co-authored several books. Her current projects include Test Tube Families: Why the Fertility Markets Need Legal Regulation (NYU Press, 2009) as well as book with Professor June Carbone, Red Families v. Blue Families (Oxford University Press, 2009). Prior to joining the faculty at GW in 1993, Cahn practiced with Hogan & Harston in Washington, D.C. and as staff attorney with Philadelphia’s Community Legal Services. She received her J.D. from Columbia Law School and her B.A. from Princeton University.

Nancy Dowd, the UF Chesterfield Smith Professor of Law and co-director of the Center on Children and Families, said Cahn’s work in family law is amazing and that her lecture will reflect her scholarship.

“Her work touches on some of the hot button topics of family law today, and she provides a richly nuanced approach to difficult topics,” said Professor Dowd. “The topic of her talk is “Family Classes,” the ways in which families are not always treated equally by the law.”

“One of the areas that were of particular concern in Bradenton Beach was the anchoring of boats next to the City Pier, which by itself is not a problem, but it often leads to abandoned and derelict vessels, illegal discharges , and safety and “land use” conflicts with shoreside neighbors.” Ankersen said. “We learned a lot about this from the 2004-05 hurricanes.”

Ankersen, legal skills professor and director of the Conservation Clinic at the University of Florida Levin College of Law, said the solution to the problems occurring at Bradenton Beach, Fla., was the addition of a mooring field to the boating area.

The plan was to install moorings instead of relying on anchors because they are safer and will increase the number of boats that can fit in a particular area. Though there are management costs and liability concerns associated with the installation of these fields, Ankersen said it will be relatively inexpensive to the boaters.

Ankersen said the pressure to have mooring fields has increased as the development of the coast has increased in Florida because traditional marinas are being pushed out by what are called “dockominiums”. Dockominiums is a concept where boaters can buy a slip and keep it for the life of the lease, so the ability for the first-come first-serve boater to get access to marina slips was being restricted. This helps justify the need for mooring fields.

William Grant Watson (JD 05) and Cathleen Kenney (JD 06), former students of the Conservation Clinic who are currently practicing law in Florida, were heavily involved in the project with Ankersen. The mooring project didn’t reach fruition though until 2008, well after the students had graduated.

“The real world doesn’t run on semesters or even academic years,” said Ankersen on the length of time it takes to complete projects. “Things usually take longer than the amount of time that the students are here with us.” Watson is currently working in law firm in Lake County. He said he is thrilled to see what has happened at Bradenton Beach.

“There was a lot of hard work and long hours that went into putting together this plan, and as with everything else in life, it’s great to see results,” said Watson.

Kenney, who is currently working for a small private firm in Ocala, was also excited to find out Bradenton Beach was creating a mooring field. She said she really enjoyed working on the project.

“Really, our project was both an opportunity to learn about the preservation of Florida’s coastal communities and continued water access, and an opportunity to disseminate this information to people eager to learn,” said Kenney.

Ankersen said the interesting aspect of this project was the intergovernmental relationship between Manatee County and Bradenton Beach.

Because of the location of the boundary line, the submerged lands beneath the water were under the jurisdiction of Manatee County. That meant that Manatee County had jurisdiction over all of the water, even though the area of importance was immediately adjacent to the Bradenton Beach municipal pier.

Ankersen said through working with Ralph Brookes (JD 84), and a Manatee County attorney, they were able to draft a special act of legislation to change the boundary line so a mooring field could be built at Bradenton Beach. Currently, Bradenton Beach has the only mooring field in Florida enshrined in legislation.

“Most students don’t realize that there are laws in Florida that are never codified in the Florida Statutes,” said Ankersen, referring to Special Acts. “That was a real eye opener for Grant and Cathy.” Though Ankersen is moving on to other projects, maybe it was fate that he ended up working in these boating situations.

“I grew up in Florida and my last name is Ankersen,” he said when asked about his interested in boating. “So I guess I was destined to work on these issues.” Ankersen and the Clinic continue to work with the State Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission on boating law reform, and with the Florida Department of Community Affairs and waterfront communities on water access issues.

The workshop, being held in Holland Hall room 359, is presented by The Florida Bar Foundation Public Interest Law Fellows and the UF Center for Governmental Responsibility. The event provides nine general CLE credits, two ethics hours and nine hours toward the Florida Bar Real Estate Certification. Preregistration cost for EJCBA members is $50, non-EJCBA members $75, government, 501(c)(3) personnel or paralegals accompanied by a supervising attorney $25 and $5 for students. After March 20, registration fees increase by $15. Charney requests that all participants of this workshop commit to provide 20 hours of pro bono legal service.

To learn more or to register for this event, co-sponsored by the 8th Judicial Circuit Bar Association, UF Real Property Law Association, Association for Public Interest Law and the UF Journal of Law & Public Policy, visit www.law.ufl.edu/cgr/fellowship.shtml.

Professor Amar is the Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science at Yale. His work has been cited more than 20 times by the U.S. Supreme Court; he has also been mentioned on the popular TV show The West Wing, to which he was a consultant. Amar served as editor of the Yale Law Review and clerked in the First Circuit for then-Judge Stephen Breyer. He has authored five books, including America’s Constitution: A Biography and The Bill of Rights: Creation and Reconstruction. His work has been honored by many groups, including the Federalist Society.

“Professor Amar is one of our nation’s leading constitutional scholars and his Dunwody lecture will be a stimulating and informative discussion for all,” said Florida Supreme Court Justice Charles T. Canady, a friend and fellow Yale Law School graduate who plans to attend the Dunwody lecture.

Amar’s constitutional law course at Yale is one of the most popular undergraduate classes at campus. “Professor Amar is a brilliant, engaging and entertaining lecturer,” said Peggy Hunt, a third-year UF law student and former student of Amar’s. “His constitutional law class was one of my favorite courses at Yale.”

The public is invited to attend the lecture, hosted by the Florida Law Review, at 10 a.m. Tuesday, March 24, at the UF College of Law campus in the Chesterfield Smith Ceremonial Classroom (Holland 180) or via webcast at www.video.ufl.edu.

To celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Florida Law Review, the college will webcast the Dunwody Lecture in Law for the first time on the World Wide Web.

“The fact that UF alumni and students and faculty from colleges around the world can join in the celebration makes this Dunwody Lecture very special,” said Larry Dougherty, editor-in-chief of the Florida Law Review.

The Dunwody Lecture Series was established by U.S. Sugar Corporation and the law firms of Dunwody, White, & Landon, P.A. and Mershon, Sawyer, Johnston, Dunwody and Cole in honor of UF law graduates Elliot and Atwood Dunwody. The honorees were brothers who dedicated their lives to the legal profession and who set a standard of excellence for The Florida Bar.

For more information on the March 24 event, webcast, Dunwody Lecture series or the Florida Law Review, visit www.floridalawreview.com.

Cossack presently serves as the legal analyst for ESPN, reporting on how the law applies in various ways to sports. He also is distinguished practitioner in residence at Pepperdine University School of Law, where he teaches a course on media and the law.

“Roger Cossack offers our students a unique perspective on the law, as a practitioner, analyst, and professor,” said Jon Mills, professor, dean emeritus, and director of the Center for Governmental Responsibility. “He visited our law school in 2001 as part of a distinguished panel of experts who analyzed the 2000 presidential election in a CGR-sponsored forum. At that time, we knew we wanted to bring him back because he was such an excellent, informed speaker. We hope our students and faculty take advantage of the opportunity to meet and hear from him.”

Cossack was a prosecutor and a defense lawyer during his 22 years of practice, and in 1984 he argued U.S. v. Leon before the Supreme Court. Prior to beginning his private practice of law, he served on the faculty of the UCLA Law School. In 1994 he joined CNN as the co-host of Burden of Proof and also was the CNN legal analyst. From 1994 to 2001 he covered all the major legal events, including breaking the Bush v. Gore decision, the impeachment of President Clinton, and the disputed election of 2000. He has been with ESPN since 2002.

The CGR lecture is sponsored through contributions of CGR alumni and friends, principally led by Judge Anne C. Conway, U.S. District Judge for the Middle District of Florida, and the Jon Mills Family. Cossack’s visit is jointly sponsored by the Brechner Center for Freedom of Information in UF’s College of Journalism and Mass Communications.

Contact: JoAnn Klein at 352-273-0843 or klein@law.ufl.edu

Bokor, a partner in the Pinellas County-based firm Johnson, Pope, Bokor, Ruppel & Burns, LLP, provides a variety of services to non-profits, including assisting new organizations to apply to the Internal Revenue Service and attain tax-exempt status.

The most important legal issue faced by non-profits is the structuring of gifts, Bokor said.

“Sometimes we’ve been called in where a person is making a gift and they have strings attached and so you’ve got to make sure that those strings aren’t going to cause the charity any problems.”

Non-profits must also be mindful to continue operating on a charitable basis and not get involved in what could be considered business activities, he said.

“If they have business activities, that can either cause them to pay some tax or lose their tax exempt-status.”

Faced with the country’s economic crisis, most non-profit organizations have been forced to carefully watch costs and scale back their activities. Without such organizations, there would be fewer hospitals, no museums and no performing arts locations, Bokor said.

“If you took out all the not-for-profit organizations that we have around us, society would be a heck of a lot different than it is today,” Bokor said.

Bokor became interested in tax law after getting to know his father’s attorney, Norman Lipoff (LLB 61).

“Back when I was an undergraduate, I met with him (Lipoff) a couple of times and he said, ‘It’s a great profession, you ought to do it.’”

Bokor took Lipoff’s advice and excelled at UF Law, serving as editor of the law review and eventually graduating with honors. After graduating from law school, Bokor received a master’s in tax law from The New York University School of Law.

Bokor continues to support the law school by serving as chair of UF Law Center Association, Inc.

“I think UF law school was a major contributor to my success as a lawyer,” he said. “And it’s a chance to give back.”

Outside the legal realm, Bokor has positively impacted his community in a variety of ways, serving as the chair of both the Morton Plant Mease Health Care System and Morton Plant Mease Foundation, a non-profit group that supports four hospitals.

“You can’t do enough for those organizations because they do so much for the community,” Bokor said.

Bokor’s hard work has not gone unnoticed. In January, he was named “Mr. Clearwater” for his contributions to the community. The award is the highest honor bestowed by the Clearwater Regional Chamber of Commerce.

“I never ever, ever thought I’d even be considered, much less win the award,” he said. “Hopefully, it helps encourage other people to get involved.”

LawLawPalooza, an annual event which features talented law students from the University of Florida Levin College of Law School, will be held on Thursday, March 19, at the Backstage Lounge.

The event, hosted by the Association for Public Interest Law (APIL) and the John Marshall Bar Association (JMBA), will open doors at 8 p.m. and will begin promptly at 9 p.m.

“It is essentially just a law school social,” said Asghar Syed (3L), treasurer of APIL. “We just want to have a big event there everyone can enjoy the law school community.”

Though fun and entertainment is a big factor in LawLawPalooza, APIL and JMBA’s main goal is to raise money for a good cause. All of the funds raised through ticket sales from this event will be donated to the APIL fellowship. The APIL fellowship is a 2,000 stipend that is raised to give to law students in the summer that have accepted unpaid public interest internships. Other donations will also be acceptable.

Syed said the show is going to be a fun time because of the mix of talent that will be performing.

“It’s kind of like a variety show,” said Syed. “We are kind of going for SNL or something like that. You know like comedy sketches, music, pretty much all of the above.”

In addition to the solo acts, five bands will be rocking the house. Bands scheduled to perform include Dean Jerry’s Mustaches, Crazy Dicta, Superfish, and the monster. Jeffrey Davis, professor of law at UF Levin College of Law, will be his own band and will play some folk songs.

Zachary Lawton, a member of Crazy Dicta, has been a regular at UF’s annual LawLawPalooza. Other band members include: UF Law grad Randy Porcher, who plays bass, guitar, mandolin, and vocals, and journalist Joe Chaves, who plays lead guitar.

Tickets are $8 in advance and $10 at the door. Advance tickets will be sold in the UF Levin College of Law Marcia Whitney Schott Courtyard at the throughout Public Interest Week. JMBA members are $8 regardless of the ticket purchase time.

Lawton said that LawLawPalooza is a great event and people should come because it is for a good cause.

“APIL is a terrific organization, so I’d say they should come primarily because they know their money will go to good use.”

For more information about the event, contact Syed at asghar.a.syed@cba.ufl.edu, or Jennifer Hartzler at jennifer.hartzler@gmail.com. To donate to the fellowship make checks payable to LSA (memo line: APIL Fellowship) and send it to Kristen Bryant in the Center for Career Services.

Public Interest Week Schedule of Events

Tuesday, March 17, 5 p.m.: Practicing Criminal Law the Public Interest Way
The first event of the week will consist of lawyers discussing how they practice from the opposite side of the courtroom and how they see their work contributing to the welfare/benefit of society. Featuring attorneys include Whitney Untiedt from the Public Defender’s Office and Teresa Drake from the State Attorney’s Office. The event will be held in Faculty Dining Room

Wednesday, March 18, 5 p.m.: Florida Amendment 2, Civil Unions, Concerns and Consequences
Wednesday will showcase a discussion on the recent enactment of Florida Amendment 2, the discriminatory effects of the ban on civil unions, and its adverse legal consequences. The event will feature Shelbi Day of the ACLU of Florida LGBT Advocacy Project and will be held in Bailey Courtroom

Thursday, March 19, 8 p.m.: LawLawPalooza
LawLawPalooza, co-hosted by JMBA and APIL, will feature live music, law school talent, and a great night out. All proceeds from tickets will go toward the APIL Fellowship. The event will be held at the Backstage Lounge from 8 pm to Midnight. Tickets are available at the APIL table.

Monday, March 23, 5 p.m.: Student Experiences in Public Interest Law
The last event of Public Interest Week will feature students discussing their internship/externship experiences in public interest law. Panelists will include students who have worked for the state attorney, public defender, legal aid, in immigration, and in prisoner right’s advocacy. This event will be held in Bailey Courtroom

For more information the events, contact Tariq Khan at gtkhan@ufl.edu.