Students ask questions and voice concerns at the April 9 John Marshall Bar Association Town Hall meeting. (Photo by Maggie Powers)

By Jenna Box
Student writer

On April 9, the John Marshall Bar Association hosted UF Law’s latest Town Hall Meeting with four UF Law deans. Historically these meetings have led to updates like the study lounge and more swipe card entries.

Dean Robert Jerry; Alyson Flournoy, senior associate dean for academic affairs; Rachel Inman, associate dean for students; and Deb Staats, associate dean for administrative and fiscal affairs, listened and addressed concerns from students on various topics.

“It’s been really encouraging to see the administration is really taking our suggestions, our wishes and our needs into consideration,” said a JMBA representative who introduced the panel. “They’ve really done a lot to help us as a student body going forward.”

Discussion highlights included:

Facilities

New water fountains, waterless urinals, better cleanliness and an increased number microwaves in the cafeteria were among suggestions and topics of question.

Staats urged students to snap photos of cleanliness issues when spotted. She said these could be used by the custodial team to target problem areas. She also encouraged students to take advantage of the two new microwaves in the cafeteria that will soon arrive and the cleaning products — such as Sani-wipes — that will be nearby.

Library Hours

Students expressed concern about library hours during football games and exam week. Currently, the library is closed during home football games.

Jerry empathized with students on this issue and said that options to make sports-infused weekends more study-friendly would be pursued, but he said that tailgating near the law school on game days poses a risk to the interior of the building if it were to be open, based on recent experiences with the restrooms that have been open on game days.

Students also requested later hours for a longer period near exam weeks and in general.

According to figures recorded by the library during past extended hours, on average only up to 10 people were in the library at the 4 a.m. hour, and about 20 during the 2 a.m. hour, said Claire M. Germain, associate dean for legal information. She also noted that staffing the library during these hours posed a problem.

For those who prefer to study late, space is currently available via swipe entry in Bruton-Geer Hall, Jerry said, and the possibility of extra classroom space will also be considered.

The planned extended hours — 7:30 a.m. to 2 a.m. — for the library began April 12, and will continue through May 2.

Curriculum and Registration

Regarding recent registration concerns, the course schedule is currently available in an Excel spreadsheet and in a PDF on the website, Flournoy said.

Flournoy also mentioned the possibility of online career guides that would list courses available to students who want to pursue a specific legal path, such as construction real estate law or sports law. Oftentimes, classes that benefit a certain type of law study aren’t necessarily labeled in a way that makes it obvious, she said.

The valuable Pretrial Practice class will be evaluated to decide if it should be expanded to a four-credit course, as students had suggested, or whether the topic warranted more than one course.

Finally, where students identify class conflicts involving a registration priority course, she advised checking both fall and spring schedules during registration. The schedules have been designed to include multiple sections of these classes.

Externships

Currently, law firms are not allowed as externships at UF Law. Jerry called this rule “a relic of the past,” even though, he said, a majority of law schools currently have the same rule as UF.

Because the externship has become a stepping stone to the job market, this is something the administration and faculty will need to look at to provide opportunities to connect new forms of skills training with the private sector, Dean Jerry said.

All input is appreciated by the administration, and students are encouraged to pass along further questions or concerns to the JMBA office.

From left, Debra Staats, associate dean for administrative and fiscal affairs; Alyson Flournoy, senior associate dean for academic affairs; Dean Robert Jerry; and Rachel Inman, associate dean for students, paneled a town hall meeting Nov. 13. (Photo by Marcela Suter)

By Felicia Holloman (3L)

University of Florida Levin College of Law’s John Marshall Bar Association held a town hall to tackle hot-button issues for students and potential solutions.

Students, faculty, and staff filled the Chesterfield Smith Ceremonial Classroom on Nov. 13 to discuss concerns regarding exam scheduling, the variety of classes offered and library hours.

Dean Robert Jerry; Rachel Inman, associate dean for students; Alyson Flournoy, senior associate dean for academic affairs; and Debra Staats, associate dean for administrative and fiscal affairs, paneled the meeting.

The topics discussed at the town hall were chosen through a student survey, which received 169 responses.

A high-priority issue was the exam conflict rule, which allows students to reschedule an exam if more than one of their exams is scheduled on the same day. The rule does not allow adjustments for students who have two exams within 24 hours of each other.

Nearly 80 percent of respondents reported general dissatisfaction with the rule, while 88.7 percent of respondents reported that having more than one exam in a 24-hour period puts them at a disadvantage.

One proposed solution is to institute a reading period. But Inman remarked that a reading period would likely extend the semester, and could pose problems for students who live on campus or receive financial aid. Jerry suggested scheduling conflicts with main campus may be avoided by starting the semester earlier.

Although the faculty needs to be consulted on the question of changing the exam conflict rule, Jerry believes students expressed compelling reasons for the change.

“This is a solid argument,” Jerry said. Inman hopes for a change to the conflict exam rule to be instituted by spring semester.

Another issue concerned the variety of classes offered in certain concentrations. A total of 56.6 percent of respondents reported that they were dissatisfied with the number of classes offered in their area of interest. A significant percentage of these responses called for more classes in criminal; entertainment, arts, and sports; and real property, probate, and trust law.

Flournoy explained some of the factors that influence the classes offered.

“We look at enrollment each semester and adjust accordingly,” Flournoy said.  “We try to balance the number of offerings in different subject areas so that there is a good array of offerings each semester.”  But in general, the spring semester schedule accounts for students enrolling in fewer credit hours. Thus the number of electives offered is adjusted accordingly.

According to Flournoy, faculty members are working with the administration with the goal of developing additional tools for academic guidance to help advise students on courses that are relevant to different career paths, some of which may not be obvious to students. Flournoy is also working with faculty to develop additional courses in areas of strong student interest.

A change to be instituted this semester is 24-hour access to a classroom for studying in the weeks prior to exams. Law students may use their swipe cards to access the room seven days a week. The change comes amid student complaints that libraries around campus and the county are not opened often enough.

Jerry expressed his appreciation for students’ input.

“We get a lot of good ideas from this, either through comments in the survey or the town hall,” Jerry said.

Alyson Flournoy
Professor of Law,
Director, Environmental & Land Use Law Program
Flournoy coordinated and served as editor for a report that was released recently on regulatory failures in the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and how to avoid future catastrophes. The report – “Regulatory Blowout: How Regulatory Failures Made the BP Disaster Possible and How the System Can Be Fixed to Avoid a Recurrence” – was written under the auspices of the Center for Progressive Reform and can be found here.

“Study shows BP oil spill could have been prevented by regulation” (Sept. 30, 2010, Inhabitat.com)

The oil spill regulations report coordinated and edited by Flournoy was used as the basis for this article, which presents some of the report’s findings.

From the article:
“‘BP is responsible for this disaster, without question,’ said study co-author Alyson Flournoy, CPR Member Scholar and law professor at the University of Florida. ‘But the Minerals Management Service’s permissive approach to its regulatory responsibilities together with inadequate legislative mandates for safety and environmental protection, and Congress’s inadequate funding of MMS created an environment that allowed BP to take shortcuts with safety, with disastrous results.’”

“Greater oversight from feds needed to avoid another BP oil spill” (October 4, 2010, The Examiner)

Flournoy was interviewed about the CPR study that was released last week about the ideas presented in the study.

An excerpt from the interview:
“So, to another point cited in the report, why in the world is the big business of oil so cozy with those who regulate the industry? And while CPR is calling for changes now, why didn’t they occur sooner?”
“Flournoy laughed heartily. It seemed so obvious, and yet she said ‘the sad fact is when you read the current statute that governs drilling for oil and gas — our public natural resources — there is very, very little attention to health, safety or environmental protection …And over time that helped to create an environment with a weak agency with little or inadequate funding and lack of a mandate to protect the public, and the environment became a captive of industry and dependent on industry. So now, it is abundantly and sadly, tragically obvious that we need this kind of independence.’”

Fletcher N. Baldwin, Jr.
Emeritus Professor
Baldwin is currently on a three-week lecture series on the subject of international financial crimes and money laundering at Beijing University and the University of Shanghai.

Nancy Dowd
David H. Levin Chair in Family Law and Director, Center on Children & Families
Dowd just received reprints for her recently published article, “The “F” Factor: Fineman as Method and Substance” for a colloquim celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Feminism and Legal Theory Project, 59 Emory Law Journal 1191 (2010).

Shani King
Associate Professor
King presented “The Ethics of Representing Children” with adjunct professor Gabriela Ruiz to the Children’s Legal Services Grantees Conference, a statewide conference of children’s legal services advocates. The intent was to explore some of the complex ethical issues that arise in the legal representation of children.

Lyrissa Lidsky
Stephen C. O’Connell Chair
“Deltona ‘gigolo’ says his online ads are legal” (Oct. 4, 2010, Daytona Beach News-Journal)

Lidsky commented on an article about online ads on websites like Craigslist.org and Backpage.org where escort services are advertised. Although Craigslist.org has banned the ads, Backpage.com has not; and they are not screening the ads.

From the article:
“Lyrissa Lidsky, a professor of law at the University of Florida, said commercial speech proposing a transaction gets less protection than other types of speech.”
“‘(An ad) has to be lawful. It has to propose a lawful transaction,’ she said. ‘It seems to me if these are transparently ads for illegal activities, then the First Amendment protection is not there.’”
“The question of what liability media outlets incur when publishing ads suggestive of illegal behavior remains open, Lidsky said, pointing to two pre-Internet cases involving the magazine Soldier of Fortune. In the 1980s, the magazine published classified ads for mercenaries that led to two cases that resulted in murders.”

Joseph Little
Emeritus ProfessorLaw shields Volusia from beach-driving suits” (Oct. 3, 2010, The Daytona Beach News-Journal)

Little comments in this article that examines cases where pedestrians have been hit or killed by cars driving on the beach in Volusia County, and why there have been few cases of the county facing lawsuits because of it. One main reason is the doctrine of sovereign immunity, which in Florida, extends to planning-level decisions, but not operational-level actions.

From the article:
“‘Whether or not to put up a traffic light at a particular intersection is a planning-level decision,’ explained Joseph Little, emeritus professor at the University of Florida’s Levin College of Law. ‘Once you put it up and, say, the light burns out, and the city fails to replace the light … and a crash occurs, that would be operational.’”
“Ironically, Little pointed out, those signs [the county has recently put on the beach] could actually make the county liable.”
“‘If you put up a sign that people begin to rely upon, and someone knocks it down, and the county doesn’t put it back up again in a reasonable amount of time … there could be certain risks,’ he said.”

Jon Mills
Dean Emeritus Director, Center for Governmental Responsibility Rutgers University case highlights how advancing technology can easily be misused” (Oct. 4, 2010, Orlando Sentinel)

Mills commented on privacy in the digital age in an article that looks at technology and the law in relation to the case of the Rutgers University student who committed suicide.

From the article:
“‘The core problem is the technology has gotten so far ahead of our culture that we don’t realize collectively the impact,’ said Jon Mills, a law professor at the University of Florida, and nationally known expert on privacy. ‘It’s so easy to intrude … that intrusions are going to happen. We have to both realize that and we have to learn to punish too.’”
“Mills and prosecutors weren’t aware of any proposals to toughen the law in Florida.”

Winston Nagan
Samuel T. Dell Research Scholar Professor of Law Founding Director, Institute for Human Rights and Peace DevelopmentMarco Rubio’s Tea Party: A blank check” (Oct. 6, 2010, The Gainesville Sun)

Nagan contributed an op-ed article where he criticized Republican senatorial candidate Marco Rubio’s seeming lack of fresh ideas or willingness to express his position on issues. Nagan also criticized the Tea Party movement, citing racist motivations and misguided ideas about governance.

From the article:
“In the hope of finding something fresh in Rubio’s ideas, alas, I listened as he recited some old hackneyed phrases from the GOP headquarters in Washington. He was incredibly disappointing. So I wonder what it is that has energized the Tea Party community in their ardent support of him. I take three of the points he has made and try to show that candidate Rubio has almost no sense of what’s going on.”

Gabriela Ruiz
Adjunct Professor
Ruiz presented “The Ethics of Representing Children” with Professor Shani King to the Children’s Legal Services Grantees Conference, a statewide conference of children’s legal services advocates. The intent was to explore some of the complex ethical issues that arise in the legal representation of children.

Michael Seigel
Professor“Lawmakers seek to close corruption loophole” (Oct. 1, 2010, Security Management)

Seigel’s testimony during the Senate Judiciary Committee’s hearing regarding the Supreme Court’s decision in Skilling v. United States was referenced in an article examining the case. The hearing was to discuss legislation regarding honest services mail and wire fraud.

From the article:
“Michael L. Seigel, University of Florida Research Foundation Professor of Law, agreed with Breuer, but also noted that Congress should make the new law specific in establishing what conduct would be illegal. Such precise language is necessary, said Seigel, to prevent erroneous interpretation.”

Michael Siebecker
Associate Professor
Recently presented “Corporate Social Responsibility and a New Discourse Theory of the Firm” at the EABIS 9th Annual Colloquium on Corporate Responsibility and Emerging Markets at St. Petersburg State University Graduate School of Management (Russia).

He also presented “Corporate Social Responsibility and the Law: An Alternative Career Path for Lawyers” for the Corporate and Securities Litigation Group and Association of Law & Business at the Levin College of Law.

“What has happened? A lot. What needs to happen? A lot.”

This was UF Law Professor Alyson Flournoy’s response to the federal government’s actions since the BP oil disaster April 20. UF Law students and faculty discussed legal and policy issues from the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil spill before an audience Sept. 16 in the Martin H. Levin Advocacy Center.

Law students Austin Moretz, Alyssa Cameron, Jesse Reiblich, James Davies, Carli Koshal and Fay Pappas presented their research on various aspects of the catastrophe including a comparative analysis from state and federal perspectives of the legal foundations governing spills, responses to the oil spill, recovery and restoration issues and social impacts of the disaster. UF Law faculty Tim McLendon, Alyson Flournoy, Mary Jane Angelo, Richard Hamann, Joan Flocks and Brian Mayer commented on the issues presented by the students, and Jon Mills served as moderator.

The role of policy is to minimize other disasters and see what we can do to compensate those who have been harmed, said Mills, dean emeritus, professor of law, director of the Center for Governmental Responsibility, and member of the University of Florida Oil Spill Task Force. The commentators noted the challenges in determining natural resource damages, especially among affected entities that have never been known, like species of never-before-seen squid.

Hamann highlighted the difficulties of “how to value things people have never seen before, especially things they have no economic use for.” He also proposed creative uses of the restoration money to improve the Gulf of Mexico’s environment – such as protecting sea turtle nesting beaches in the Caribbean, which was seriously degraded even before the spill.

“Will we step back and learn the broader lesson?” Flournoy asked, pointing out that the U.S. needs to respond to the challenge of dealing with low-probability catastrophic events.

The UF Law Oil Spill Working Group, the Center for Governmental Responsibility, and the UF Law Environmental and Land Use Law Program sponsored the informational symposium.

Bob Dekle

“Goldie Robinson: Elderly South Daytona woman was unearthed in trailer park, autopsy confirms” (Sept. 7, 2010, Orlando Sentinel)

A woman’s body was discovered in a homemade grave, and a neighbor is being questioned. A murder case will depend on findings from the Medical Examiner’s Office.

From the article:
“‘Just by the way a body decomposes, a medical examiner can tell you a lot about the manner of death and the cause of death,’ said Bob Dekle, a law professor at the University of Florida who was a prosecutor for 30 years in North Florida.”

Lauren Fasig

“Kids in cuffs” (Sept. 7, 2010, Yamhill Valley News Register)

A recent study led by Fasig was referenced in an article about an Oregon defense lawyer who filed a motion to prevent the shackling of juvenile inmates during their five-minute walk from the detention center to courthouse hearings.

From the article:
“[The lawyer] cited a recent study by Emily Banks, Anna Cowan and Lauren G. Fasig of the Center on Children and Families at the University of Florida’s Levin College of Law. It found that shackling children on their way to court is psychologically damaging, and that it puts the focus on the humiliation they feel over being cuffed rather than the substance of the proceedings themselves.”

Lyrissa Lidsky

“Florida pastor has legal right to burn Qurans” (Sept. 8, 2010, Associated Press)

Although Dove World Outreach’s pastor may be constitutionally allowed to burn the Koran, the Constitution does not protect him from local laws. The church was denied a burn permit by the City of Gainesville.

From the article:
“‘Denying him the permit had nothing to do with the content of his speech and enforcement of the law presumably has nothing to do with the content of his speech,’ said Lyrissa Lidsky, a professor at the nearby University of Florida College of Law. ‘If I set a bonfire in my front yard here in Gainesville, presumably they would do the same thing.’”

Jon Mills

“Oil Regulations Conference” (Sept. 8, 2010, WRUF AM 850)

WRUF covered a talk given by Mills and Alyson Flournoy on Tuesday where they addressed issues involving the laws and regulations in the Gulf oil spill. Mills called for more regulations that focus on the potential for damage and individual safety.

Alyson Flournoy

“Oil Regulations Conference” (Sept. 8, 2010, WRUF AM 850)

WRUF covered a talk given by Flournoy and Jon Mills on Tuesday where they addressed issues involving the laws and regulations in the Gulf oil spill.

Jeffrey Harrison

Harrison’s new book, “Monopsony in Law and Economics,” has been published by Cambridge University Press. The book addresses potential harm that can be caused by monopsonists, and the laws established to protect against them. It was co-authored by Richard Blair.

Prof. Jon Mills and Prof. Alyson Flournoy addressed government regulation in regards to the oil spill

There may be no use crying over spilled milk, but spilled oil is something the government should be concerned about.

Better government regulation in industries affecting the environment, such as the oil industry, was one of the topics addressed at “The 2010 Gulf Oil Spill: A case study in the need for forceful government regulation,” an informational forum held by The American Constitution Society for Law and Policy, Levin College of Law Student Chapter, and GreenLAW. Students were given the chance to ask questions of the presenters.

Prof. Alyson Flournoy, director of the environment and land use law program and Prof. Jon Mills, dean emeritus and director of the Center for Governmental Responsibility, served as speakers for the event.

The forum included an analysis of current government policies and their regulatory failures, a discussion of the complexity of the laws dictating who will be compensated for damages from the oil spill and a presentation of possible policy reforms.

“We saw this [event] as an opportunity to explore an issue a lot of people were interested in, and give an analysis [of the oil spill] that people haven’t heard already,” said Henry Perlstein, 3L and president of the UF student chapter of The American Constitution Society for Law and Policy. “[We're] putting it in a bigger context.”

Flournoy and Mills took two different approaches to painting a bigger picture of the legal ramifications of the government policies in place.

Flournoy presented findings from a forthcoming report from the Center for Progressive Reform that she and about 12 other law professors from all over the country recently worked on, in a presentation called “The BP Deepwater Horizon Disaster: A Case Study in Regulatory Failure.” The presentation focused on regulatory failures that put public health, safety and the environment at risk in the implementation of the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act (OCSLA), National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), Endangered Species Act (ESA) and Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA).

Some of the regulatory failures under the OCSLA are inadequate standards for safety and environmental protection in operations and spill response, inadequate environmental review processes and inadequate penalties and performance bonds. Under NEPA, regulatory failures included failure to plan for the worst-case scenario, shortcuts through categorical exclusions and inappropriate tiering; and under the ESA, ignoring low probability risks of catastrophic harm to listed species and failure to aggregate low probability risks were identified as problems.

Beyond addressing these problems, proposed reforms mentioned in Flournoy’s presentation included providing adequate funding to perform necessary regulatory functions and to hire, train and retain competent staff; implementing new ethics standards; ending the revolving door and creating a culture that supports the agency’s regulatory mission.

Flournoy’s personal reform suggestions include better government regulation and more funding to enable relevant government agencies to adequately protect health, safety and the environment. After the event, Perlstein said he thinks big reform requires an attitude shift that focuses on protecting people, and not just growth in the industry, to permeate legislation and other action by politicians.

Mills focused on the complexity of determining who was going to get what aid and how much of it they were going to get. He talked about the affected, which includes fishermen, seafood distributors, restaurant owners, beach hotels and others.

“I have been seeking clarity and certainty and I have found very little,” Mills said.

According to Mills, some provisions of the applicable laws are vague and will depend on terpretations by the courts. For example, under the Oil Pollution Act, Mills said that there is compensation provided for the damaged natural resources, but compensation for economic damages to private parties depends on specific facts. The law also varies in the four states that are affected by the oil spill; Alabama, Florida, Louisiana and Mississippi. So under state law, a Florida hotel owner may have different remedies from a hotel owner in Alabama or Louisiana.

“There is no doubt that the current legal structure and remedies will be inadequate for a significant number of people who have been harmed,” he said.

Given the importance of the aftermath of the spill to Florida’s economy, the presenters mentioned what UF and Levin, specifically, are doing to help the state in the wake of the oil spill.

In June, the College created a law school working group with Mills as the head and Flournoy serving as a member, among other faculty members. The working group also includes six law students working on various research projects, such as an analysis of tort remedies available for damaged parties and an evaluation of the process being administered by Kenneth Feinberg, manager of the $20 billion BP Gulf disaster compensation fund. The working group is hosting an oil spill symposium at 4 p.m. on Sept. 16 in the Martin H. Levin Legal Advocacy Center. The six students – Alyssa Cameron, James Davies, Carli Koshal, M. Austin Moretz, Fay Pappas, Jesse Reiblich – will each present their research findings to a faculty panel that will raise questions and provide critiques.

Students interested in being a part of the working group should contact Mills.

But for students who may not have the chance to do research with the working group, there are still ways to get involved with oil spill remedies.

“People could explore and ask questions, and stay informed,” Perlstein said. “They themselves can be advocates for change. You don’t have to be a senator to influence policy. You can be an average person and influence people around you by informing them,” he said.

“It’s like the saying goes,” Perlstein said, “you can either help a lot of people a little bit or help a small amount of people a lot.”

• “An attempt to revive the lost art of apology” (Jan. 30, 2010, New York Times)
  Cohen explained that an accident involving a senator’s daughter was the impetus for legislation that allows people to say they are “sorry” without worry of law suits for admission of guilt. In fact, it was a traffic accident in the 1970s that led politicians to try to resolve some of these problems. According to Jonathan R. Cohen, a law professor at the University of Florida, a Massachusetts state senator’s daughter was killed while riding her bicycle, and the driver who hit her never apologized. The father couldn’t believe that the driver had never expressed contrition, Professor Cohen said, and was told that the driver had dared not risk even saying “I’m sorry,” because it could have been seen as an admission in the litigation surrounding the girl’s death. When the state senator retired, he worked with his successor to introduce and win passage of legislation that allowed a “safe harbor” for people to offer “benevolent gestures expressing sympathy or a general sense of benevolence,” said Professor Cohen, who has written extensively on the intersection of law and apologies Now, a majority of states have enacted “I’m sorry” laws — some that address just medical malpractice, while others apply to all civil cases.

Mary Jane Angelo

• Published “Stumbling Toward Success: A Story of Adaptive Law and Ecological Resilience” in the Nebraska Law Review

George “Bob” Dekle
Legal Skills Professor

• August 23, 2009, Ft. Myers News Press
  Dekle provides insight into how some cases are perused and others are not in the case of child negligence. “Ft Myers parents’ substance abuse can be deadly to infants; Simple negligence is not enough to support a criminal charge,” said Bob Dekle, a University of Florida legal skills professor who worked as an assistant state attorney for three decades.
• August 22, 2009, Daytona News Journal
  Dekle provided insight into prosecuting an officer for any crime. “Prosecuting police officers is not an activity which tends to endear you to other police officers,” Dekle wrote. “You have to be very diplomatic so as not to erode the good will of uncharged officers.”
• August 18, 2009, Daily Business Review
  Dekle shed light on a judge’s decision to keep illegally recorded tapes sealed. “The public good has very little to do with the exclusionary rules,” said Bob Dekle. “Everybody in the entire country could know the circumstance of the conversation, and it still isn’t admissible in court against the aggrieved party.”

Mark Fenster
Associate Dean for Faculty Development

• July 14, 2009,New York Times
  Fenster commented on conspiracy theories, the people that believe those in power can’t be trusted and how internet communications has enable those who think alike to come together.
• July 29, 2009,WBUR Boston
  Fenster was interviewed as an expert in conspiracy theories. “The story that these folks tell is based on the idea that Obama is an illegitimate president,” says Mark Fenster, author of Conspiracy Theories: Secrecy and Power in the American Culture. “Any evidence of legitimacy would spoil the narrative, and that would end the pleasure of spinning out the narrative,” says Fenster, an associate dean at the University of Florida’s Levin College of Law.

Alyson Flournoy
Professor; Director of Environmental and Land Use Law Program; UF Research Foundation Professor

• Published “Protecting a Natural Resource Legacy While Promoting Resilience: Can It Be Done?” in the Nebraska Law Review.

Diane Mazur
Professor

• July 6, 2009, 40 Business Journals, Forbes, Sun Herald, Examiner, and Breitbart News etc.
  The Palm Center released a memo in response to an announcement by Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, last week saying he had directed his general cousel to study the flexibility contained in the law and to find “a more humane way to apply the law” while awaiting legislative appeal. The legal memo also makes clear that any steps which “fall short of ceasing all discharges under ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ will have a negligible operational effect on gay and lesbian troops, and therefore on our national security.”

Jon Mills
Director of Center for Governmental Responsibility; Dean Emeritus; Professor

• August 11, 2009,Sun Sentinel
  Mills weighed in on the appropriateness of Brogan’s pitch for a private development. Jon Mills said he sees no problem if Brogan is not being paid, and if there’s a public interest aspect to the project, such as environmentally friendly development. “Presidents don’t lose their free speech rights,” he said.
• Delivered the paper “The New Global Press and Privacy Intrusions: The Two Edged Sword” at the Privacy Law Scholars Conference, hosted by the Berkeley Law School.

Katheryn Russell-Brown
Chesterfield Smith Professor; Director of Center for Study of Race and Race Relations

• July 24, 2009, USA Today and Miami Herald
  The Gates story has captured the nation because it has a “perfect storm” of ingredients, said Katheryn Russell-Brown. The ongoing question of whether the U.S. has moved past racism combined with the fact that Gates actually studies African-American issues — all taking place on the hallowed confines of Harvard — provided for this explosion of interest, Russell-Brown said. “Many people want to believe that now that we have an African American in the White House, that now we can get past all this race stuff,” said Russell-Brown, who wrote The Color of Crime, a book about race, crime and justice.

Michael Siebecker
Associate Professor

• Recently completed his Ph.D in Political Science at Columbia University. His article “Building a ‘New Institutional’ Approach to Corporate Speech,” which was published last year in the Alabama Law Review, was reprinted in the 2009 edition of the First Amendment Handbook, which Dean Rodney Smolla edited.

Barbara Bennett Woodhouse
David H. Levin Chair in Family Law; Professor; Director, Center on Children and Families and Family Law Certificate Program;

• “Hidden in Plain Sight: the Tragedy of Children’s Rights from Ben Franklin to Lionel Tate” was selected for the annual prize of the Human Rights section of the American Political Science Association.

Danaya Wright
UF Research Foundation and Clarence J. TeSelle Professor

• July 8, 2009, Wright gave testimony regarding the railbanking statute before the Surface Transportation Board (the successor to the Interstate Commerce Commission) in Washington, D.C.