When the Endangered Species Act was passed in 1973, it proved to be a great step forward in showing the United States’ and Congress’ commitment to preserving our nation’s natural heritage and protecting native plants and animals from becoming extinct.

In honor of the 40th anniversary of the ESA, the 19th annual Public Interest Environmental Law Conference at the University of Florida Levin College of Law will focus on the evolution of endangered species protection over the past four decades. “The Endangered Species Act at 40: Polishing the Crown Jewel,” will be held Feb. 21-23 at UF Law.

“I’m very excited about this year’s conference,” said UF Law Professor and Director of the Environmental and Land Use Law Program Mary Jane Angelo. “We are bringing in experts from around the U.S. to discuss the act’s many successes, such as the recovery of our national symbol, the bald eagle, as well as significant challenges we face in the future such as addressing impacts from habitat loss and climate change.”

Keynote speakers for this year’s conference include Carl Safina, founding president of the Blue Ocean Institute and award winning author of Song for the Blue Ocean and Eye of the Albatross, and Zygmunt Plater and Patrick Parenteau, attorneys in the landmark decision of Tennessee Valley Authority v. Hill et al. – temporarily halting the completion of the Tellico Dam on the Little Tennessee River in order to protect the snail darter, an endangered species of fish.

The conference will also include multiple panel discussions, a workshop sponsored by The Florida Bar, and training opportunities for both attorneys and those outside the legal field.

UF Law student and PIEC co-chair Chelsea Sims said the PIEC is one of the largest student-run conferences in the nation.

“It’s a great opportunity for UF students to engage with cutting edge issues surrounding endangered species such as the Florida panther, corals, sea turtles, manatees and more,” Sims said.

To view the agenda and register for the conference, visit http://www.law.ufl.edu/academics/concentration/elul/public-interest-environmental-conference. UF Law students and faculty attend free-of-charge. Select “student” when registering.

“Any student that is interested in learning about the status of endangered species, the role of climate change, or the interface of science and policy regulating endangered species will enjoy this free event at the law school campus,” said Rachael Bruce, UF Law student and PIEC co-chair. “Please come out and join us.”

When the Endangered Species Act was passed in 1973, it proved to be a great step forward in showing the United States’ and Congress’ commitment to preserving our nation’s natural heritage and protecting native plants and animals from extinction.

In honor of the 40th anniversary of the ESA, the 19th annual Public Interest Environmental Law Conference at the University of Florida Levin College of Law will focus on the evolution of endangered species protection over the past four decades. “The Endangered Species Act at 40: Polishing the Crown Jewel,” will be held Feb. 21-23 at UF Law.

The event is free-of-charge for students and faculty. Register under “student conference” (the banquet still calls for a $35 fee).

“I’m very excited about this year’s conference,” said Mary Jane Angelo, UF Law professor and director of the Environmental and Land Use Law program. “We are bringing in experts from around the U.S. to discuss the act’s many successes, such as the recovery of our national symbol, the bald eagle, as well as significant challenges we face in the future such as addressing impacts from habitat loss and climate change.”

The keynote speakers for this year’s conference include Carl Safina, founding president of the Blue Ocean Institute and award winning of author of Song for the Blue Ocean and Eye of the Albatross, and Zygmunt Plater and Patrick Parenteau, attorneys in the landmark decision of Tennessee Valley Authority v. Hill et al. – temporarily halting the completion of the Tellico Dam on the Little Tennessee River in order to protect the snail darter, an endangered species of fish.

The conference will also include multiple panel discussions, a workshop sponsored by The Florida Bar, and training opportunities for both attorneys and those outside the legal field.

UF Law 3L and PIEC co-chair Chelsea Sims said the PIEC is one of the largest student-run conferences in the nation.

“It’s a great opportunity for UF students to engage with cutting-edge issues surrounding endangered species such as the Florida panther, corals, sea turtles, manatees and more,” Sims said.

To view the agenda and register for the conference, visit http://www.law.ufl.edu/academics/concentration/elul/public-interest-environmental-conference.

“Any student that is interested in learning about the status of endangered species, the role of climate change, or the interface of science and policy regulating endangered species will enjoy this free event at the law school campus,” said Rachael Bruce (3L), PIEC co-chair. “Please come out and join us.”

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.

Presented “Promoting Agricultural Production, Healthy Communities and Biodiversity through Ecoagriculture” at the CGR’s 11th annual Conference on Legal and Policy Issues in the Americas in May in Montevideo, Uruguay.

Fletcher Baldwin

Presented a paper titled, “The rule of law: an essential component of the financial war against organized crime and terrorism in the Americas, Uruguay round,” at the CGR’s 11th annual Conference on Legal and Policy Issues in the Americas in May in Montevideo, Uruguay.

Commented on the panel, “Financial Crime & Street Crime,” at the CGR’s 11th annual Conference on Legal and Policy Issues in the Americas in May in Montevideo, Uruguay.

Elizabeth Dale

Commented on the panel, “The Intersection of Law & Society with Public Labor and Employment Law,” and she presented a paper at a panel (which she organized), “Deploying History: Uses of the Past in Constitutional Discourse, Comparative Studies,” at the Law and Society Association conference in Chicago in May.

Nancy Dowd

Dowd made presentations on masculinities and feminist theory at two conferences in March at Harvard Law School and the Center for Applied Feminism at the University of Baltimore Law School.

Joan Flocks

Co-authored a paper titled, “The Role of Employers and Supervisors in Promoting Pesticide Safety Behavior among Florida Farmworkers,” which was published in the American Journal of Industrial Medicine, 53(8):814-824, 2010. Flocks was also one of six invited reviewers nationwide for a report by the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies, “Assessing the Effects of the Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill on Human Health” which came out of a June 2010 meeting and is currently available for free in prepublication at http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=12949.

Commented on the panel, “Comparative Perspectives on the Environmental/Human Rights Link in the Americas,” at the CGR’s 11th annual Conference on Legal and Policy Issues in the Americas in May in Montevideo, Uruguay.

Berta Hernandez-Truyol

Commented on the panel, “Comparative Perspectives on the Environmental/Human Rights Link in the Americas,” at the CGR’s 11th annual Conference on Legal and Policy Issues in the Americas in May in Montevideo, Uruguay.

Lea Johnston

Johnston presented “Wrestling with the Problem: Exploring the Promise of Social Problem-Solving Theory for Representational Competence,” at the American Psychology-Law Society Annual Conference in March, and presented her current work-in-progress, “Mental Health Courts: Theoretical and Empirical Deficiencies,” at the SEALS new scholars workshop in early August.

Pedro Malavet

Presented a paper titled, “Comparative Law as Looking Glass: What Foreign Legal Systems Can Teach us About Ours,” at the CGR’s 11th annual Conference on Legal and Policy Issues in the Americas in May in Montevideo, Uruguay.

Martin McMahon

Published “Living with the Codified Economic Substance Doctrine” in 128 Tax Notes 731 (Aug. 16, 2010).

Timothy McLendon

Presented “Eco-Constitutionalism: Authority or mandate? Florida’s awkward experience” at the CGR’s 11th annual Conference on Legal and Policy Issues in the Americas in May in Montevideo, Uruguay.

Commented on the panel, “Agro-Ranching and the Environment,” at the CGR’s 11th annual Conference on Legal and Policy Issues in the Americas in May in Montevideo, Uruguay.

Jon Mills

Commented on the panel, “Emerging Legal Issues in Uruguay and the Americas,” at the CGR’s 11th annual Conference on Legal and Policy Issues in the Americas in May in Montevideo, Uruguay.

Stephen Powell

Presented a paper titled, “Managing the rule of law in the Americas: an empirical portrait of the effects of 15 years of WTO dispute resolution on civil society in Latin America,” at the CGR’s 11th annual Conference on Legal and Policy Issues in the Americas in May in Montevideo, Uruguay.

Commented on the panel, “Trade, Business, and Dispute Settlement,” at the CGR’s 11th annual Conference on Legal and Policy Issues in the Americas in May in Montevideo, Uruguay.

Michael T. Olexa

Presented a paper titled, “Chemicals, Cosmetics, and Consumers,” at the CGR’s 11th annual Conference on Legal and Policy Issues in the Americas in May in Montevideo, Uruguay.

Don Peters

Presented a paper titled, “It Takes Two to Tango, and to Mediate: Legal Cultural and other Factors influencing United States and Latin American Lawyers’ Reluctance to Mediate Commercial Disputes,” at the CGR’s 11th annual Conference on Legal and Policy Issues in the Americas in May in Montevideo, Uruguay.

Leonard Riskin

Presented “Finding the Appropriate Problem Definition in Mediation” at the Annual Symposium on Dispute Resolution in the Courts in April.

Danny Sokol

Sokol was announced as the series co-editor of the new series “Global Competition Law and Economics,” to be published by Stanford University Press. He has also been appointed as one of the members of the editorial advisory board for the “Antitrust Chronicle,” a publication of Competition Policy International.

Jeff Wade

Commented on the panel, “Agro-Ranching and the Environment,” at the CGR’s 11th annual Conference on Legal and Policy Issues in the Americas in May in Montevideo, Uruguay.

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.