Members of Florida Moot Court Team return from successful Navy JAG Corps national competition
Leah Edelman, David Evans, Jesse Isom, and Patrick Mize, members of the Florida Moot Court Team, recently traveled to the Naval Air Station in Jacksonville on Oct. 28-30 to compete in the U.S. Navy JAG Corps 2010 National Moot Court Competition. The team made it through several rounds of oral arguments advancing to the Finals. Ultimately, the team was awarded Runner-Up of the competition and 3L David Evans was named Best Oralist. The team was coached by Alex Landback and Elizabeth Bryan. Pictured from left to right is Alex Landback, Patrick Mize, Leah Edelman, David Evans, Jesse Isom and Elizabeth Bryan.

Space still available for London Law Consortium
There is still room in the London Law Consortium, Spring Semester Study Abroad Program, which takes place from Jan. 10 – April 29, 2011. For more information on this program, check out the website. To discuss this opportunity, contact Michelle Ocepek in the Office of Student Affairs – HOL 164, ocepek@law.ufl.edu or 352-273-0620.

Stu Cohn
Associate Dean, International Studies
A new edition of Cohn’s two-volume treatise, Securities Counseling for Small and Emerging Companies, has just been published by Thomson/West.

Elizabeth Dale
Affiliate Professor of Law
Dale gave a paper titled “The Su Bao Case and the Layers of Everyday Citizenship in Shanghai, 1900-1905″ at the Multilevel Citizenship Conference at Glendon College, York University, Toronto, and a paper titled “Putting ‘Liberty’ in its Place: Discussions of ziyou, Slavery, and Sovereignty in Turn-of-the-Century China” at the American Bar Foundation/U. Illinois Legal History Seminar.

Jeffrey Harrison
Stephen C. O’Connell Chair
Harrison presented a paper titled “Privacy, Copyright, and Letters,” at a conference on transparency, secrecy, and the Internet at Elon Law School; and a paper entitled “Regulation, Deregulation and Happiness” at a conference honoring Paul Verkuil at Cardozo Law School.

Robert Jerry
Dean, UF Law; Levin Mabie & Levin Professor of Law
“JBA hosts ‘Dueling Deans,’ Welcomes judges from First DCA” (Nov. 1, 2010, Financial Review & Daily Record)

Dean Jerry was quoted in this article about the “Dueling Deans” Georgia-Florida themed luncheon Friday, Oct. 29. Jerry and former University of Georgia Law Dean David Shipley both presented arguments addressing both the school’s football teams and moot court competitions.

From the article:
University of Florida Levin College of Law Dean Robert Jerry presented a case, based on numerous statistics, on why the Gators would win the game Saturday.

“The most important question on everyone’s mind is who will win the game Saturday,” said Jerry. “Since the beginning of the competition 30 years ago, the winner of the moot court has lost the football game about 70 percent of the time.” (Georgia lost to Florida Saturday.)

Joseph Little
Professor Emeritus
TV segment, “Before you vote…Alachua County charter amendments breakdown” (Nov. 1, 2010, WCJB TV-20)

This segment offered a primer for the Alachua County charter amendments on Tuesday’s ballot. Little addressed Amendment 3 on the ballot.

From the piece:
The purpose of this item is to permit the people of one city, whether it’s the City of Gainesville, or the City of Micanopy, or the City of Lacrosse, to veto a matter that might need county wide regulation.

Diane Mazur
Professor of Law
“Retired chaplains warn against ‘don’t ask’ repeal” (Oct. 29, 2010, Associated Press)

Retired military chaplains have said that if the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy is thrown out, current chaplains will not be able to serve both God and the military because their faith considers homosexuality a sin. Some churches have threatened to withdraw their endorsements if the policy, making their clergy ineligible to serve as chaplains also.

From the article:
A good military chaplain must minister to everyone, said Diane Mazur, a retired Air Force captain and University of Florida Law Professor who specializes in interaction between civilian and military law. “It’s really very different than in the civilian world, and repealing ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ doesn’t really change that basic difference.”

Winston P. Nagan
Samuel T. Dell Research Scholar Professor of Law; Affiliate Professor of Anthropology; Founding Director, Institute for Human Rights and Peace Development

Winston Nagan’s contribution “Human Rights and Employment” has appeared in Volume 1, No. 1 of CADMUS, a journal of the World Academy of Art and Science, at pp. 49-52.

“Tea Party agenda and right-wing extremism” (Oct. 29, 2010, The Gainesville Sun)Nagan contributed an op-ed article to The Gainesville Sun in which he addressed his concerns about the motivations and philosophies behind the Tea Party movement.

From the article:
Perhaps the best that we can glean from the Tea Party crowd is that their disjunctive and uncoordinated message is really a single issue: that they oppose a black President, and that, like Sen. Mitch McConnell indicated, they will spend the next two years trying to ensure that Obama will not be an 8-year president.

Don Peters
Professor of Law
Peters has published “It Takes Two to Tango, and to Mediate: Legal Cultural and Other Factors Influencing United States and Latin American Lawyers’ Resistance to Mediating Commercial Disputes,” in 9 Richmond Journal of Global Law & Business 381 (2010).

Leonard Riskin
Chesterfield Smith Professor of Law
Riskin gave a talk on “The Negotiation Within” at the Dispute Resolution Research Center, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University.

Danny Sokol
Assistant Professor of Law
Sokol contributed a chapter entitled “International Antitrust Institutions” in Cooperation, Comity, and Competition Policy (Andrew T. Guzman, ed.) Oxford University Press, 2010).

Servicemembers Legal Defense Network attorneys lead a workshop Oct. 26. (Photo by Andres Farfan)

Attorneys from the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network educated students on the intricacies of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” at a workshop Oct. 26.

The workshop focused on analyzing military laws and their effects on gay people, trans people, and those who are HIV positive by working through fact patterns involving typical issues handled by the SLDN.

SLDN Legal Director Aaron Tax reviewed the things that can trigger “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” or DADT, which are a statements that one is gay, a gay action, or marriage or attempted marriage to someone of the same sex. He went on to discuss various defenses available to someone during a DADT hearing, including protected associational activities and the “queen for a day defense.”

“These defenses sometimes work no matter how bizarre they sound,” said Tax, noting that oftentimes the military wants an excuse to keep someone in service.

David McKean, SLDN Staff Attorney, noted that there is a discrepancy between the application of DADT on men and women in the military. As a practical manner, women have a lot more leeway in actions that “look gay,” but as a practical matter, women are disproportionately discharged for DADT reasons.

“The takeaway is that the DADT is completely arbitrary in its application,” McKean said. “Some people serve 20 years openly, and some never come out.”

SLDN is a national, non-profit legal service, watchdog and policy organization dedicated to ending discrimination against and harassment of military personnel affected by “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and related forms of intolerance.

The American Constitution Society and OutLaw sponsored the event.

James Davies, 2L, wades through the woods during the law school clean-up. (Photo courtesy of Henry Perlstein)

University of Florida law students got down and dirty at the Fall 2010 Law School Woods Conservation Area Clean-up Day Oct. 23.

The event is an annual undertaking involving mulching, tree planting and fence installation. The event’s goal is to help to avoid overpopulation of invasive exotic species of plans, clean out garbage, and to help maintain a passive recreation area. Arborist Erick Smith instructed the group of attendees on invasive plant removal and disposal.

“My vision of the area is for the woods to be a conservation area first, and a non-destructive recreation area second,” GreenLAW Law School Woods Coordinator Henry Perlstein said. “If we can make a passive recreation area that students enjoy, we are doing a service to the conservation goal by helping more people appreciate and enjoy the beauty and seclusion of the woods.”

The area boasts a pavillion and picnic tables, making it a perfect open-air study spot.

GreenLAW and the Conservation Clinic co-sponsored the event and expect to have another clean-up day in the spring. They would like to mulch, add additional picnic tables and repair the pavilion.

“The woods can offer a quiet place that is close to the school, with a beautiful natural backdrop,” Perlstein said. “It is a unique place given how secluded you can feel inside of it, yet how close to the law school campus you actually are.”

Tax symposium attendees applaud the various expert speakers. (Photo by Andres Farfan)

The University of Florida Levin College of Law’s Graduate Tax Program held its sixth annual International Tax Law Symposium on Oct. 29 at the Martin H. Levin Advocacy Center at UF Law. The symposium featured presentations by distinguished members of the global tax community and commentary from UF Law Graduate Tax Professors Stephen J. Powell, Lawrence Lokken and Yariv Brauner.

“It was a very successful conference,” said Michael Friel, associate dean and director of the Graduate Tax Program at UF Law. “The speakers did an excellent job on cutting-edge topics in the world of international taxation.”

The symposium began with a presentation by economist Charles E. McLure Jr., senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. In the lecture, which was titled “The GATT – Legality of Border Adjustments for Carbon Taxes and the Cost of Emissions Permits: a Riddle, Wrapped in a Mystery, Inside an Enigma,” McLure discussed the sometimes difficult topic of carbon taxes and how they are handled in developed countries like the United States and in less industrialized countries.

Next, University of Southern California Gould School of Law Professor Edward D. Kleinbard presented his lecture, “Stateless Income.” Kleinbard defined stateless income as being “income derived by a multinational group from business activities in a country other than the domicile (however defined) of the group’s ultimate parent company, but which is subject to tax only in a jurisdiction that is neither the source of the factors of production through which the income was derived, nor the domicile of the group’s parent company.”

The last presentation, “The Common Consolidated Corporate Tax Base,” was given by Bertil Wiman, professor of international tax law at Uppsala University. Wiman discussed the international tax implications of a common corporate tax base in Europe.

Friel said the feedback on the symposium has been very positive and he is looking forward to doing it again next year.

For the first time, the symposium was streamed live via the Internet and people attended the conference via the webcast from several locations in the United States and a number of foreign countries, Friel said.

An archived version of the International Tax Law Symposium can be viewed from the UF Law homepage.

Professor Adrienne Davis addresses the crowd Wednesday, Nov. 3. (Photo by Joey Springer)

Man’s best friend can also be man’s best beneficiary when it comes to pet inheritance laws.

Trusts, pets and the law were discussed at a talk on pet inheritance sponsored by the Camp Center for Estate Planning at noon on Wednesday, Nov. 3, in the Chesterfield Smith Ceremonial Classroom, HOL 180. Professor Adrienne Davis, the William M. Van Cleve Professor of Law at Washington University Law School, was the guest speaker. About 100 students attended the hour-long event.

Davis started the presentation by giving a brief background on the importance of pets in America and why they are included in inheritance laws.

According to Davis, 63 percent of American households have pets, and American children are more likely to grow up with a pet than with both parents. Twenty percent of Americans ended a romantic relationship because of a dispute over their pets and 30 percent of Americans have stayed home from work to take care of a sick pet. Davis said $41 billion was spent on pets last year, with pets receiving an average of $95 worth of gifts during the holiday season, which is “more than what some of us probably spend on a gift for our significant other.”

As these statistics show, Americans have a strong connection with their pets, whether they are cats, dogs, horses or hares. Pet owners sleep with their pets, exercise with their pets and consider their pets as members of the family. Davis showed news articles of studies released that concluded that many parents prefer pets to children.

“It’s interesting given the shifting attitudes of [who constitutes] family members,” said Joe Joyce, a 3L attendee of the event.

Pets are not only considered members of the family, but to some they are considered a ray of light in a dark abyss. According to Davis, elderly people have given testimonies saying their pet was their only reason for living, and that if it wasn’t for their pet, they might have given up.

Davis said pets are so important to Americans that 12 to 27 percent of people include pet provisions in their wills. Three to four million pets go into animal shelters a year and a large number of pets are in shelters because their owners passed away. Pet owners have left millions of dollars in trusts and estates to their pets to ensure that they are taken care of even after their owners pass away.

The U.K. has recognized pet gifts since 1750. The first case about pet gifts in America came up in 1923. After a checkered 70 years of sporadic and unpredictable enforcement, Davis said American law entered a “decade of revolution” in 1990 with Uniform Probate Code 2-907 and is continuing to update its pet gift laws. In addition to 2-907, Davis discussed the Charitable Remainder Pet Trust Act, which was introduced into Congress in 2007, and the Uniform Trust Code 2000, which permits “grandkid” pets, meaning that leftover money can also go to the recipient pet’s offspring.

Davis mentioned that Betty White’s dog will receive her estate when she passes and Oprah Winfrey’s dogs, Sunny and Lauren Winfrey, should be well-off as well.

Laws regarding pets and their inheritance value are constantly being updated or created and Davis, who has been teaching trusts and estate planning for 10 years, said she finds things to get more interesting every year.

“People are very schizo[phrenic] with pets,” Davis said. “I noticed that with the Mike Vick and Leona Helmsley cases.”

According to Davis, when it came to pets in the Mike Vick case, people thought pets had legal rights against abuse. But in the case of Leona Helmsley, many thought a $12 million trust fund for her dog while two of her grandchildren received nothing was excessive. Helmsley also requested that her dog’s remains be buried next to her in her grave in a mausoleum.

But besides being interesting, Davis said she hopes students realize that their client may want to leave a gift to their pet and that they should take their client’s request seriously. She also said that as a result of the presentation, students may end up helping the reform effort.

At the end of the presentation, Davis took questions from the audience. One student said they thought their question was absurd. To that remark, Davis replied, “In pet trusts, there are no stupid questions.”

Davis is also the Director of the Black Sexual Economies Project for the Center for the Interdisciplinary Study of Work and Social Capital at the Washington University Law School and Founder and Coordinator of the Law & Culture Initiative. Her articles range from trusts and estates, family law, black women and labor, slavery, sexuality, and religion.

The Camp Center for Estate Planning is directed by Assistant Professor Lee-Ford Tritt. The center integrates teaching, training, research, scholarship and public service, and is dedicated to advancing estate planning, charitable giving, and elder law knowledge, professionalism, skills and policy by educating and training both students and lawyers.