• “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.