“Law School Transparency to provide info about law schools” (Feb. 14, 2012, The Alligator)

Bishop spoke to the Alligator about when UF Law will submit information for Law School Transparency – a nonprofit organization that will provide detailed information about law school statistics.

From the article:
Pascale Bishop, assistant dean of the law school’s Center for Career Development, said UF will submit information about its 2011 graduates in late February or early March. The data for the class of 2010 was submitted in early January.

Bob Dekle
Legal Skills Professor

“No Trial in Sight in ’09 Murder Case; Progress Halted Because of Language Barrier” (Feb. 10, 2012, The Ledger)

A Guatemala native and illegal immigrant in Bartow was arrested in 2009 on murder charges, but the case hasn’t been able to move forward because the man speaks a mixture of a Mayan language and some Spanish. His limited understanding of Spanish has prevented him from communicating with his lawyers to understand how the Florida criminal justice system works.

From the article:
George “Bob” Dekle, a legal professor for the University of Florida, said Lemos’ situation calls attention to a fundamental right of all people in the criminal justice system.

“How can you put somebody through a process, and they don’t know what’s going on?” asked Dekle.

“It’s basic to any criminal justice system that the person who is being prosecuted have an understanding of what the charges are against him and what the process is whereby they’re going to be held accountable for it.”

“Inmate set to die for slaying of St. Pete woman” (Feb. 12, 2012, The Associated Press)

A Florida inmate was scheduled to be executed after spending over 30 years on death row. Dekle addressed some of the reasons why it is not uncommon for death row inmates in Florida to remain in prison for such long periods of time before execution.

From the article:
University of Florida law professor George R. “Bob” Dekle, a former prosecutor who sent notorious serial killer Ted Bundy to death row, said Florida governors have rarely been forthcoming about the reasons they select one inmate over all the others for execution.

Dekle said appellate lawyers do their best to make sure it’s not an easy choice for the governor. They file whatever they can for as long as they can to keep their cases alive in the courts. New issues based on recent court rulings and changes in the law provide new fodder for appeals all the time, he said.

“It’s guerilla warfare,” Dekle said. “As long as you can put it off, as long as you can delay, as long as you can keep the thing going in any way, shape or form possible, that’s how much time you’ve got.”

Meshon Rawls
Legal Skills Professor

“The law is a friend, not a foe, youth told at UF conference” (Feb. 11, 2012, The Gainesville Sun)

Rawls, who is also the Josiah T. Walls Bar Association president, commented on the inaugural Law and Justice Youth Conference held at UF Law. The Walls Bar Association co-sponsored the event with the UF Law chapter of the ABA Young Lawyer Division.

From the article:
UF law professor and Walls Bar Association President Meshon Rawls said Saturday’s event was a condensed version of the Street Law program, a series of classes held in neighborhoods throughout Gainesville to introduce youngsters to the legal system.

Rawls said the one-day conference also enabled more kids to participate along with more attorneys and law students, who may not be able to attend Street Law classes when they are held after school.

“We turned a six-week program of one day a week into a one-day conference,” Rawls said. “We hope to make this an annual conference.”

Jennifer Zedalis
Legal Skills Professor

“1 administrator soon will oversee 2 hospitals for mentally ill” (Feb. 14, 2012, The Gainesville Sun)

The administrator of the Northeast Florida State Hospital in Macclenny will be the head of the Macclenny facility as well as the North Florida Evaluation and Treatment Center in Gainesville when Bill Baxter retires from the Gainesville location. The Gainesville facility serves “people who are incompetent to proceed to trial or who have been judged to be not guilty by reason of insanity.” There have been concerns raised about the effectiveness of one administrator running both facilities. Zedalis commented on the issue.

From the article:
But Jennifer Zedalis, a University of Florida law professor, said that the facility she regularly tours with her students is operating on a shoestring as it is.

“A forensic facility is charged with the awesome responsibility of handling individuals who have been found incompetent to stand trial,” she said, explaining that the state is legally obligated to restrict an individual as little as possible.

“There’s not much controversy associated with the North Florida Treatment Facility because of its dedicated staff,” she said. “I’m not sure we should be lumping these two facilities together under one umbrella.”

“An average day? That’s a misnomer,” Jones said with a laugh. “I don’t think there is such a thing.” “I’m so used to being nervous that I get tense when I’m calm,” Jones said.

As the president and CEO of the nonprofit 2012 Republican National Convention Tampa Bay Host Committee, Jones is responsible for managing every detail of the three-day celebration to officially nominate the Republican Party’s 2012 presidential candidate. The details range from raising $55 million, to making sure the perfect color confetti litters the floor, to training an estimated 10,000 volunteers.

And all of those details have to squeeze into a day of waking at 5 “whether he likes it or not” to get his sons, Cal and Hubbell, ready for the day; a full-time job as the executive vice president and general counsel at the global investment firm Communications Equity Associates where he keeps tabs on about $1 billion; and, on a recent day during the Florida GOP primary, hurrying off to a presidential debate at the University of South Florida at 9 that evening.

“I get tired just telling you,” Jones said. “Every day is different. Every day is unique.”

But for a man who’s been “going full speed” since he moved to Washington, D.C., two months after graduating from UF Law to serve as former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott’s chief legal counsel and deputy chief of staff, the general counsel to the 55th Presidential Inauguration of George Bush and the senior strategic adviser to the last three Republican National Conventions, voluntarily planning one America’s two quadrennial political conventions is right up his alley.

“This is a big airplane. It isn’t easy,” said Robert Watkins, a director on the RNC Tampa Bay Host Committee. “But what Ken does is make it look easy.”

Editor’s note: Read about other accomplishments and appointments of UF Law alumni in each issue of UF LAW magazine, http://www.law.ufl.edu/uflaw/.

Back in Boynton Beach, Fla., one of his clients, a Haitian man seeking political asylum, was hoping to one day be reunited with his son, who had lost all of his remaining family members in the earthquake. Later, the man would learn that he would be able to qualify for Temporary Protected Status, rather than a final hearing on his asylum application, an application often denied by judges prior to the earthquake.

Immigration lawyer Richard A. Hujber (JD 96), of the Law Offices of Richard A. Hujber, P.A., wanted to help those left behind who were unable to seek asylum in the United States.

Millions of people were left hungry, homeless and helpless after the Jan. 12, 2010, earthquake that shook Haiti to its core. Hujber’s large client base of Haitian immigrants connected him to the devastation in Haiti. Hujber, along with 30 other community leaders, nurses and doctors, made the trek on a Christian mission trip to Haitian capital Port-Au-Prince to help the earthquake victims of the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere two weeks after the initial earthquake.

“At that moment I was just fired up,” he said. “I couldn’t just text 10 bucks anymore. I couldn’t even watch CNN anymore because you feel like nothing is being done.”

He knew he had to go to Haiti himself.

Hujber described the trip as one of the most amazing experiences of his life. Hujber has no medical background, but he used his physical strength to carry people to receive medical attention, build safe havens and help protect the camp.

“The spirit of volunteering, giving, sacrifice for community and humanity was everywhere,” he said of the various international, nongovernmental organizations.

But so were corruption, confusion and carnage.

“I will never forget what I saw,” Hujber said. “Entire communities destroyed. Tent cities already up and running. The smell — a mix between carnage and the rotting fruits and vegetables as people tried to return to their lives, those who could, selling what they had on the streets.”

The island also lacked security, so riots and looting were an everyday occurrence in the initial days after the earthquake. Unfortunately, so were infant mortalities.

“I will never forget the baby brought to our temporary clinic, set up in the rubble of a church, well outside the capital and overlooking the beautiful beach,” Hujber said. “His parents knew something was wrong because at 6 months old he could not hold his head up, as he must have before. Found in the rubble three days after the quake, I felt the dent on his head — and they diagnosed the skeletal fracture later at the University of Miami field hospital. We drove two hours in a truck, holding this baby, trying to get him the help he desperately needed. It took the assistance of actor Sean Penn to get him flown to Philadelphia for surgery, and I found out six months later he did make it, only to later die upon his return to Haiti.”

“And this is just one story out of millions,” Hujber said.

Although hunger and sickness abounded on the island, Hujber said the country needed even more than food and medical aid to recover. The country needs new infrastructure and governmental hierarchy.

“The country was in shambles before the earthquake,” Hujber said. “We passed by a huge ditch in the middle of the road and assumed it was a result of the earthquake. ‘This ditch wasn’t because of the earthquake,’ the driver said. ‘This has always been here.’”

“It’s just not enough to send food and medicine. Generational and systematic work on the hierarchy system are needed for absolute changes from the top down,” Hujber said.

One year ago, FlaLaw published a story about Nathalie Nozile (JD 11), a Haitian UF Law grad who became the first Jolie Legal Fellow, a position that places her as a special assistant to the Haitian government to help ensure equal access to justice and the protection of children’s rights in Haiti.

Humanitarian paroles had to be decreased once the orphan scandal surfaced that vulnerable Haitian children were being sold into servitude, prostitution or slavery due to “increased insecurity” in the country because of the earthquake, according to a February 2011 report from the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Hujber said Jolie’s fellowship is one way lawyers can continue to lend a humanitarian hand to the island nation, and encouraged UF Law students to help in other ways as well.

In addition to taking on pro bono cases, Hujber suggested teaching English to Haitians with Temporary Protected Status.

“Some (Haitian refugees) are still struggling to learn English and they are not yet assimilated,” he said. “They work their brains out but they need help becoming more accustomed to our legal systems. Lawyers and law students can help them with that.”

Congressman Alcee L. Hastings, D-Fla., wrote Hujber a letter thanking him for his outreach to the Haitian nation and encouraged others to do the same.

Hujber, the son of Hungarian political refugees who fled their war-torn homeland in the late 1950s and stayed in the castle of the Dutch princess as freedom fighters, has had a heart for humanity since he can remember.

“I saw a need in the community I serve,” Hujber said. “I just knew I had to go over there and help in any way I could.”

The second-year UF Law student didn’t have big goals. He pleaded for the basics.

And while Wihnyk lives in a state where he can be fired from his job or evicted from his home just for being gay, the basics are all he’s got.

“It was definitely weird going into the office of a senator and telling him or her that these were basic human rights,” said Wihnyk, president of OUTLaw, UF Law’s LGBT advocacy group.

Wihnyk traveled to Tallahassee Feb. 6 with OUTLaw secretary Kathryn Brightbill (1L) to participate in Equality Florida’s Lobby Days 2012. The two-day event brings together members of Florida’s LGBTQ community with state legislators to discuss proposed bills.

Most of these bills fight for basic human rights. And most of these bills have to be lobbied, fought and pleaded for.

“I think the general population doesn’t know you can be denied housing for being gay or be fired for being gay,” Brightbill said. “Without making our legislators aware of this problem, it’s not going to move forward.”

Brightbill joined Wihnyk for his second Lobby Days at the state capital to fight for two proposed bills in particular: the Domestic Partnership Act and the Florida Competitive Workforce Act.

The Domestic Partnership Act would create basic legal protections for unmarried, cohabitating couples regardless of sexual orientation.

“It doesn’t give nearly the amount of benefits marriage gives. It would give the very basic benefits,” Wihnyk said.

Among those marriage benefits Wihnyk lists that he’s currently denied in Florida: automatic inheritance rights, a right to make spousal health care or child care decisions, the ability to file joint tax returns, obtaining insurance through a spouse and receiving Medicare or Social Security benefits of a spouse.

So Wihnyk lobbied for the basics.

He lobbied for the Florida Competitive Workforce Act, a bill that would make it illegal in Florida to fire an employee based on sexual orientation or gender identity.

“All we need is a few courageous senators, and it’ll happen,” Wihnyk said. “I hate to say courageous, but it’s true. A lot of senators don’t want to touch these things.”

And while Wihnyk’s busy lobbying for what many take for granted, light for the Sunshine State is glowing out West.

In a double dose of victories for Wihnyk and the LGBTQ community Feb. 8, Washington state legislators voted to approve same-sex marriage while the 9th United States Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Proposition 8, a California ballot initiative defining marriage strictly as a union between one man and one woman, to be unconstitutional.

That’s good news for Florida, Wihnyk said. That’s good news for getting more than just the basics.

While more than 62 percent of Florida voters decided in 2008 to amend the state constitution to define marriage as a union between one man and one woman, Wihnyk points to the legal limbo of California’s Proposition 8.

For now, the uncertainty of how far his basic human rights stretch is good news for Wihnyk. Ultimately, the United States Supreme Court, Wihnyk said, will decide the fate of California’s marriage amendment. That ruling will affect more than California – it will untangle the nation’s messy marriage web, and it will define how we define ourselves.

But for now, Wihnyk holds on to the basics. It’s all he has.

“It’s the small things (that matter),” he said.

From left: UF Law Professor Kenneth Nunn; Jackson State University Political Science Professor Michelle D. Deardorff; Mississippi School of Law Professor Angela M. Kupenda; UF Law Irving Cypen Professor of Law Sharon Rush; and UF Law Professor Jonathan R. Cohen. (Photo by Marcela Suter)

When Barack Obama was elected the first African-American president of the United States in 2008, the question of whether America had finally moved into a post-racial society became a widely discussed topic. While the answer to the question is still being debated, it is clear that there are many valid questions about how to approach and discuss issues of race in the modern world.

Scholars at “Race Talk in the Age of Obama,” addressed some of these questions by participating in a panel discussion based on the December 2011 issue of the University of Florida Journal of Law and Public Policy to which each of the five panelists contributed an article. The event, which was held Feb. 8 at UF Law, was co-sponsored by the JLPP and the Center for the Study of Race and Race Relations.

The panel was comprised of UF Law Professor Jonathan R. Cohen; Jackson State University Political Science Professor Michelle D. Deardorff; Mississippi School of Law Professor Angela M. Kupenda; UF Law Professor Kenneth Nunn and UF Law Professor Sharon Rush, the Irving Cypen Professor of Law.

Each participant brought a unique academic perspective to the discussion, which was facilitated by brief summaries of each panelists’ article and questions from members of the JLPP.

A recurring theme of the discussion was that race should be looked at as a structural institution rather than viewed in terms of personal relationships — an idea initially put forth by Deardorff in summarizing her article co-authored with Kupenda titled “Negotiating Social Mobility and Critical Citizenship.”

“We had 300 years of racialized, legalized, maintained oppression,” Deardorff said, “and then we removed the legalized part of it and said it was done.”

Yet, all the other structures still remain, she said.

The panel also examined how to address issues of race in educational institutions — and looked at examples of it being ignored and other situations where it is being addressed.

“Talking about race is difficult and it is challenging,” Nunn said. “It takes courage, perseverance, leadership and a thick skin.”

Cohen said in terms of exchanging ideas in the classroom, you can’t guarantee that people will fully understand you, but it shouldn’t prevent you from expressing your perspective. And he pointed out that the part of the conversation that is in your control is the act of trying to understand what other people in the conversation are saying.

Rush’s article, “Talking About Race and Equality,” which posits the idea that many people fall into two categories when it comes to talking about race — those who let blindness to racial inequality lead to the avoidance of talking about race, and those who see racial inequality everywhere and want to talk about it all the time. She suggests there is a middle ground people can find where they can comfortably address topics of race and inequality.

This led to the questions of whether Obama’s “approach concedes too much by ignoring the discriminatory intent that some people have that undermines (his good intentions).” Rush said she believes Obama understands that many equality-minded people don’t think about, or understand structural racism and that he is “managing the color line with extreme aplomb.”

On the other hand, Nunn stated that “Obama’s treatment of race is his consequence of negotiating a culture in our society where he knows it’s an explosive issue. His failure to engage it shows more than anything that we haven’t gotten beyond it.”

The University of Florida Levin College of Law Center for the Study of Race and Race Relations is committed to fostering communities of dialogue on race. The center creates and supports programs designed to enhance race-related curriculum development for faculty, staff and students in collegiate and professional schools. Of the five U.S. law schools with race centers, the CSRRR is uniquely focused on curriculum development.

That tall glass of water, the place called “home,” a morning jog at the local park; these are all affected by property laws. But while many people may not ponder the ground they walk on, a group of experts spent a day examining the impact of laws governing real property.

The University of Florida Levin College of Law’s 11th annual Richard E. Nelson Symposium hosted 11 experts in the field of property law to present “Digging up some Dirt (Law): How Recent Developments in Real Property Law Affect Landowners and Local Governments,” covering topics of eminent domain, conservation easements, adverse possession and mortgages.

More than 200 students, lawyers and presenters gathered in the UF Hilton Conference Center on Friday, Feb. 10,  to hear presentations by law professors from around the country, including Carol N. Brown, professor at the University of North Carolina School of Law; Alex M. Johnson, Jr., Pierre Bowen Professor of Law, and director of the Center for the Study and Law at the University of Virginia School of Law; Ann Marie Cavazos, director of clinical programs and associate professor at Florida A&M College of Law; and Jessica Owley, associate professor at the University of Buffalo Law School.

“While some skeptics might think that concepts such as adverse possession and easements are relics of the past, the reality is that they have a real impact on people and places in the 21st century,” said UF Law Professor Michael Allan Wolf, the Richard E. Nelson Chair in Local Government Law.

Wolf’s opening speech “Diamonds in the Rough or Snakes in the Grass?: Evaluating Recent Shifts in American Real Property Law,” gave insight into the recent developments in real property law, also known as “dirt law.” Changes that are likely to benefit society were labeled diamonds in the rough and those that will be ultimately harmful were deemed snakes in the grass.

“It struck me that some recent real property developments were positive, others negative and others a mixed bag,” Wolf said.

Eminent domain was a hot topic with two presentations discussing the impact of recent eminent domain court cases and legislation. UF Law students Paul J. D’Alessandro Jr. (2L) and Tamara Van Heel (2L) detailed the recent Supreme Court case, Kelo v. City of New London, which affirmed the government’s power to transfer property from one private citizen to another through eminent domain.

Cavazos decried the Florida Legislature’s reaction to eminent domain law in the wake of Kelo.

“Florida has gone overboard,” said Cavazos, a proponent of the eminent domain proceedings that she said make beautiful cities and vibrant economic communities like Orlando and St. Petersburg possible.

Although Florida is the originator of one-fifth of all eminent domain condemnations, the Florida Legislature recently passed laws requiring a three-fifths vote from each house of the Legislature to approve eminent domain proceedings. Cavazos suggested Florida may be undermining local government in its task of bettering society through the acquisition and sale of private property.

Another discussion about property laws affecting Gainesville residents concerned perpetual conservation easements, which are legally enforceable land preservation agreements. Owley discussed the negative impact of perpetual conservation easements, which she said are inflexible solutions to environmental protection problems in a time when climate and biological knowledge is shifting.

“Money is scarce,” said Alachua County Attorney David Wagner in support of Owley’s assertion that perpetual conservation easements have vastly negative effects. The operating budget for a land trust in Alachua County is around $62,000. When money is scare, the upkeep of easements is difficult to maintain. Destructive elements in Florida’s ecosystems like feral pigs and invasive plant species cannot be properly eradicated.

Ramesh Buch, Program Manager of the Alachua County Forever Land Conservation Program described the perils of purchasing land trusts, such as governments chasing deals and losing sight of what the taxpayers want.

On the other hand, proponents of perpetual conservation easements focus on the positive impact. Buch described popular perpetual easement acquisitions made by Alachua County and their safety from “society’s whims.”

Two perpetual easements that Gainesville residents enjoy on a daily basis are the Kanapaha Prairie, and Murphree Wellfield and Santa Fe River Tracts. The tracts protect wildlife and provide drinking water for Gainesville and surrounding areas.

The symposium is named in honor of Richard E. Nelson, who served with distinction as Sarasota County attorney for 30 years, and his wife, Jane Nelson – two UF alumni who gave more than $1 million to establish the Richard E. Nelson Chair in Local Government Law, which is responsible for 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.

The symposium is co-sponsored by The Florida Bar’s Environmental and Land Use Law Section and County and Local Government Section.

“Our goal is to highlight developments of interest to local government attorneys and to bring together legal academics and practitioners to explore mutual areas of interest,” Wolf said.