The six-week summer program at the University of Costa Rica in San Jose is unique in the extent to which substance, skills and field work are integrated into a cross-cultural classroom that includes students from law schools throughout the United States and Latin America.

In 2006 the program offered international and comparative environmental law, international environmental justice, environmental dispute resolution and the UF Law Conservation Clinic. These courses came together as students addressed the indigenous right to property in the Americas, the international and comparative law of sea turtle conservation, and the law of transboundary rivers.

Related field trips included a two-day white water rafting trip along a river through indigenous territory threatened by a dam; navigating the Rio San Juan, the boundary river between Costa Rica and Nicaragua that is the subject of a case before the International Court of Justice; and working side by side with sea turtle researchers at the Tortuguero biological station on Costa Rica’s Caribbean Coast. An informational meeting will be held Tuesday, Oct. 24, at noon in Holland 359. Students can also visit the program website at http://conservation.law..edu/summer_costarica and contact the program’s director, Legal Skills Professor Tom Ankersen at Ankersen@law.ufl.edu or 273-0835.

The study co-authored by Christopher L. Peterson, an associate professor at UF’s Levin College of Law, and Steven M. Graves, an assistant professor of geography at California State University, surveyed more than 13,000 zip codes and found that payday loan companies clustered in areas near military bases.

The findings were cited in a report by the Pentagon, and last month Peterson testified before the Senate Banking Committee. On Sept. 29 Congress agreed to legislation prohibiting lenders from imposing an interest rate of more than 36 percent on loans to members of the armed forces or their dependants.

“It’s just fantastic,” Peterson said. “It’s probably the most consumer-friendly legislation Congress has passed in a generation.” Congress may have been moved, he said, by the irony of claiming to support the troops while at the same time allowing them to be preyed upon by the predatory lending practices of the payday loan companies. Payday loans are high-interest loans intended to tide the borrower over to his next paycheck. In a typical payday loan, a lender might give a borrower $100 cash in exchange for a post-dated check for $115. When the loan comes due, typically two weeks later, the lender cashes the check, recouping his $100 plus a $15 “lender’s fee.”

If the borrower doesn’t have enough money in the bank when the loan is due, he can always refinance—by borrowing more money on the same terms. Known as a “rollover,” this practice can quickly turn a small loan into a sizable financial obligation. Charges for payday loans vary, but a typical lender will charge around $17 or $18 for a two-week loan of $100.That’s roughly equivalent to an annual interest rate of 450 percent.

Peterson hopes the limits placed on loans to military families can someday be made on loans to civilians as well.

“These kinds of loans are being made to people from all walks of life,” Peterson said. “If it’s good for military sevice members it ought to be good for everybody else, too. Nevertheless, I think this is a step in the right direction and something to build upon.”

Peterson has been studying predatory lending for years, and is the author of Taming the Sharks: Towards a Cure for the High Cost Credit Market, which received the American College of Consumer Financial Services Attorneys’ Best Book of the Year Award for 2004.

Peterson and Graves mapped payday loan locations in 20 states, including 109 military bases, and found that ZIP codes near military bases consistently had higher numbers of payday lenders than nonmilitary ZIP codes of similar population and demographic makeup.

Military personnel make good targets for the payday loan industry, Peterson said. Junior enlisted personnel often have low salaries and little experience managing money. Because the military frowns on nonpayment of debt—delinquent soldiers can face demotion, loss of security clearances, and even discharge—lenders can be confident they will be repaid. 

Peterson believes the research he and Graves did may have influenced some leaders at the Pentagon, which cited the study in a ground breaking press release and in talking points for its legislative affairs personnel. 

“I got into this business thinking I wanted to make a difference, and then I realized that’s completely a pipe dream,” Peterson said. “But I think we actually made a difference on this one. We kind of helped this happen,”

UF Law students Josh Spoont and Elizabeth Faist took home best team honors at the Moot Court Team’s biannual Final Four on Friday, Oct. 6. Spoont was also named best oralist in the competition, and took the prize for best brief. Jesse McIntyre was named best overall competitor.

The competitors presented oral arguments in front of justices from the Florida Supreme Court, including Justices Harry Lee Anstead, Charles T. Wells, Barbara J. Pariente, and Peggy A. Quince, as well as retired Chief Justice Ben F. Overton, an adjunct UF law professor.

The Fall Final Four is sponsored by the Orlando law firm of Zimmerman, Kiser & Sutcliffe, and is the culmination of a five-week try-out competition, which requires interested students to write an appellate brief and then present two oral arguments before a panel of judges.

The Justice Campbell Thornal Moot Court Team competes each year at over a dozen tournaments throughout the country. The team was founded in 1961, and was named after the prominent Florida Supreme Court Chief Justice. The team’s mission is to promote excellence in appellate advocacy.

Levin College of Law Professor Walter Weyrauch (above, right) is being honored with a new annual lecture in his name presented by the Center on Children & Families.

The inaugural lecture will take place Thursday, Nov. 2, at noon in the Chesterfield Smith Ceremonial Classroom with family law and constitutional scholar David Meyer, Mildred Van Voorthis Jones Faculty Scholar at the University of Illinois College of Law. Meyer’s lecture is titled “Palmore Comes of Age: The PLace of Race in The PLacement of Children.”

A leading scholar at the intersection of constitutional law and family law, Meyer’s recent articles have appeared in numerous journals. In the summer of 2006, he served as United States Co-Reporter on Family Law at the Congress of the International Academy of Comparative Law in Utrecht, The Netherlands.

Meyer received his B.A. in History with Highest Honors and his J.D. magna cum laude from the University of Michigan, where he also served as Editor-in-Chief of the Michigan Law Review. He clerked for Judge Harry T. Edwards on the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and Justice Byron R. White on the United States Supreme Court.

Weyrauch, the Stephen C. O’Connell Chair and Distinguised Professor of Law, joined the UF faculty in 1957. He currently teaches family law and business organizations.

Professor; Sam T. Dell Research Scholar

• Presented a paper entitled “Hedge Funds:The Need for further Regulation” at the Cambridge Symposium on Economic Crime at Jesus College, Cambridge, England in September.

Lyrissa Barnett Lidsky

Professor, UF Research Foundation Professor

• Published “Are Bloggers the New Lonely Pamphle- teers?” UF Law magazine, 2006.

• Presented her new article, “Authorship, Audiences, and Anonymous Speech,” co-authored by former UF law professor Tom Cotter, to the faculty at a Brown Bag workshop on Sept. 29. The article will be published in the Notre Dame Law Review.

• Participated as a faculty mentor and commenta- tor at the Jurisgenesis conference at Washington University in St. Louis, Summer 2006.

• Spoke on the Florida Bar Media Law Committee’s annual panel discussion of “First Amendment Cases in the Supreme Court,” Summer 2006.

• Spoke at the Southeastern Association of Law Schools conference on recent First Amendment decisions in the Supreme Court.

• Published 2006 Supplement to Franklin, Anderson & Lidsky’s Mass Media Law (7th ed. 2005).

Diane H. Mazur

Professor

• Spoke at Yale Law School during an Oct. 6 forum on “The Judge Advocate General Corps Under ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’: Should Gays Be Allowed to Serve in the Military, and If Not, Should You Serve?” Professor Mazur’s remarks were based on her recent article in the Journal of National Security Law & Policy, “A Blueprint for Law School Engage-ment with the Military.”

Robert C.L. Moffat

Professor; Affiliate Professor of Philosophy

• Delivered a lecture, “Habermas, Rawls . . . and the Future of Europe,” to the Institut Fuer Kriminalwis- senshaften und Rechtsphilosophie, Faculty of Law, Johann-Wolfgang-Goethe University, in Frankfurt, Germany, on July 13.

• Delivered a lecture, “The Entitlements Blackhole: The Transformation of the West,” to the Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Social Law, Munich, Germany, on July 20.

Lars Noah

Professor

• Received the Simonsmeier Award ($2,500) from the American Society for Pharmacy Law for his previously published article “Ambivalent Commitments to Federalism in Controlling the Practice of Medicine.”

• Spoke at a Federalist Society program on regula- tory compliance as a defense to pharmaceutical product liability held in Ann Arbor, Mich.

• Spoke about developments in biotechnology at the annual meeting of the Florida Bar Association.

Michael Allan Wolf

Professor, Richard E. Nelson Chair in Local Government Law

• Presented a talk on recent developments in eminent domain law at the 2006 Conference of the National Association of Appellate Court Attorneys in Richmond in July.

In the News

Lyrissa Barnett Lidsky

Professor, UF Research Foundation Professor

•USA Today, Oct. 10. Commented on the case in which a Florida woman sued a Koiusiana woman for defaming her on an ionternet blog nd was awarded $11.3 million.

Joseph W. Little

Professor, Alumni Research Scholar

• Orlando Sentinel, Oct. 4. Quoted in an article about th debated that ensued when Florida election officials said they might post signs by election booths to clarify that a vote for former U.S. Rep Mark Foley is a vote for his replacement, Joe Negron. “It sounds problematic to me,” he said.

• South Florida Sun Sentinel, Oct. 4. Quoted in an article similar to that of the Orlando Sentinel onnsignance to flarify the Negron-Foley dilemma.

• The Gainesville Sun, Oct. 9. In an article about Gainesville’s recent panhandling prohibition settlement, he said the change in the rule allowed the city to acknowledge the rule’s shortcommings while “retaining the ability to regulate activities that would impede traffic.”

Michael Allan Wolf

Professor, Richard E. Nelson Chair in Local Government Law

• The Flagler Times, Sept. 27. Quoted in an article about the effect of the Concurrency 360 on school impact fees. “I Don’t think (Concruenccy 360) is the end of school impact fees,” he said.

• Palm Beach Post, Oct. 9. Quoted in an article about Loxahatchee residents’ efforts to become a town in order to stop developers from turning open land into subdivision heaven.