In a forthcoming article in the Boston College Law Review (“Jurisdiction to Tax Corporations”), University of Florida Law Professor Omri Marian proposes a new policy-perspective for international corporate taxation, questioning whether foreign subsidiaries of U.S. companies, such as many of Apple’s, should indeed be viewed as “foreign.” The paper can be downloaded at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2245802.

“Apple’s strategy is perfectly legal,” Marian notes. “It simply highlights the U.S. tax code failure in treating companies incorporated offshore as ‘foreign’ for tax purposes, even though many of such companies, wholly owned by U.S. parents, do not exist except on a piece of paper in some tax haven jurisdiction.”

Marian suggests that the United States should adopt a functional approach to corporate taxation by defining corporations “domestic” for tax purposes using a two-pronged corporate tax-residence test: the place where the corporation’s securities are listed for public trading, or the place of the corporation’s central management and control.

Affirming that corporations are nothing more than imaginary entities, this approach asks what the policy purpose is for taxing corporations rather than becoming bogged down in the usual question of a “territorial system” or of “worldwide consolidation.”

Since we primarily care about the taxation of publicly traded corporations, Marian suggests making the public listing the test for residency of the parent, and to treat the subsidiaries managed by the parent as domestic. Under the approach, all “foreign” subsidiaries where the earnings are trapped will become domestic, and as such subject to tax in the United States. This will be an important first step toward a much necessary broadening of the U.S. corporate tax base, whether the U.S. keeps its global system of taxation, or adopts a territorial one.

Marian specializes in international taxation, comparative taxation and taxation of financial instruments. He joined the UF Law faculty in 2012 after leaving the firm of Sullivan & Cromwell LLP in New York.

Contact:
Omri Marian, Assistant Professor of Law
352-273-0975 or marian@law.ufl.edu

Six UF Law students were inducted into the UF Hall of Fame – the highest recognition given to student leaders at UF – and UF Law third-year student Amanda Harris has been nominated to receive a 2013 Burton Distinguished Legal Writing Award.

“I feel very blessed and humbled to receive the award,” Harris said. “It’s a pleasant surprise to have such exciting news at the end of my law school career, and I’m so excited to represent UF and see where my future leads.”

The Burton Awards were established to acknowledge and reward effective legal writing, from “publications to the greatest legal reforms in law,” according to the Burton Awards website.

Harris’ article, “Surpassing Sentencing: The Controversial Next Step in Confrontation Clause Jurisprudence,” published in the Florida Law Review, addresses the issue of the right to confrontation and whether it applies during capital and noncapital sentencing.

Harris will graduate in the top five percent of her class and has a clerkship lined up with Chief Justice Karen K. Caldwell in the Eastern District of Kentucky in Lexington. She will receive the award at the Burton Awards ceremony in June in Washington, D.C.

The UF Law students who were inducted into the University of Florida Hall of Fame are:

Laura Beard

Mitchell Cooper

Ashley Dunnigan

Brock Hankins

Wesley Maul

Dana Somerstein

Award recipients were honored earlier this month by President Bernie Machen and Vice President for Student Affairs Dave Kratzer at a ceremony in front of family and friends.

This year, 123 University of Florida students applied for the award and 27 were selected. A committee composed of faculty, staff and two former award recipients reviewed the applications.

Since 1921, UF Hall of Fame recognizes seniors and graduate students who have consistently demonstrated an outstanding commitment to improving the University of Florida through campus and community involvement, participation in organized campus activities, and scholastic achievement.

The Division of Student Affairs coordinates the award. Applications are available at the beginning of February every year.

Past award winners include George Smathers (1937), Stephen O’Connell (1938), Ralph Turlington (1942), Marshall Criser (1950), Steve Spurrier (1967), Susan Jacobs (1971), Danny Ponce (1973), Maruchi Azorin (1976), Dean Cannon (1990) and Jason Rosenberg (1990).

For more information and a complete list of past award winners, please visit http://www.ufsa.ufl.edu/students/honors_awards_scholarships/hall_of_fame/.

For more information:
Matt Walker, UF Law Communications
352-273-0650, mlwalker@law.ufl.edu

UF Law Professor Dennis Calfee stands with Florida Bar Tax Section Chair Michael Lampert (left) and UF Law alumnus and founding partner at Comiter, Singer, Baseman & Braun, Richard Comiter. Calfee was honored as The Florida Bar Tax Section Gerald T. Hart Outstanding Tax Attorney of the year Saturday, April 27 at the section’s 35th annual meeting held at the Hilton University of Florida Conference Center in Gainesville.

GAINESVILLE, Fla. – The Florida Bar Tax Section recognized University of Florida Law Professor Dennis Calfee as the Gerald T. Hart Outstanding Tax Attorney of the Year on Saturday at the section’s 35^th annual meeting.

Participants repeatedly praised Calfee for his energetic assistance to students and colleagues during his career on the UF Law Graduate Tax faculty that began in 1975. During his tenure, Graduate Tax has evolved into the top ranked public school tax program in the nation, as measured by U.S. News and World Report. Calfee was selected based on the significant impact he has made in improving the quality of tax law practice in Florida and the United States.

“We know Dennis in a lot of different ways, wearing a lot of different hats in the program,” said UF Law Graduate Tax Director Michael Friel during the ceremony at the Hilton University of Florida Conference Center. “He is – as we all know – an extraordinary scholar with a leading treatise in the country in estate gift tax. He is … a truly extraordinary teacher.”

Friel was among many speakers, including UF President Bernie Machen and UF Law Dean Robert Jerry and numerous UF Law alumni, to acknowledge Calfee’s vast influence and reputation in the tax world.

Friel said in addition to being an extraordinary friend and colleague over the years, Calfee has provided an incredible degree of service to UF Law’s graduate tax program, the Law Center Association and the Florida Law Review, where Calfee serves as faculty adviser.

Calfee matriculated through the UF Law graduate tax program’s inaugural class and after earning his LL.M. in taxation in 1975, was asked to remain in Gainesville as an interim professor for one year, which led to his many subsequent years as an integral part of the tax program.

Throughout his career, Calfee has served as a mentor to, and influenced, many tax attorneys in Florida, across the country and around the world. He has served as associate dean at UF Law, been nominated twice as Professor of the Year and in 1998 was appointed an Alumni Research Scholar. He has also taught at Peking University in Beijing, the University of Leiden in the Netherlands, the Academy of International Tax in Taiwan, and the University of Montpellier in France. In 2006, the Republic of China Ministry of Finance honored him with a third level public finance specialty medal in recognition of his guidance in developing Taiwan’s public finance system and training tax officers.

At the end of the ceremony, Dean Jerry and UF Law alumnus Richard Comiter announced the successful completion of the campaign to endow the Dennis A. Calfee Eminent Scholar Chair in Taxation.

“That hundreds of alumni contributed to making this chair a reality is a testament to Dennis’s impact on so many students through not just the years, but the decades,” Jerry said.

Approximately 240 alumni and guests attended the tax section dinner honoring Calfee, including many of Calfee’s former students and research assistants.

The first Gerald T. Hart Outstanding Tax Attorney of the Year award was given to UF Law emeritus faculty member James Freeland in 1982. Other UF Law faculty recipients include Richard Stephens in 1985, current adjunct Samuel Ullman in 1994, and David Richardson in 2000.

For more information:
Matt Walker, UF Law Communications
352-273-0650, mlwalker@law.ufl.edu

UF Law Dean Robert Jerry said he is proud of UF Law’s annual performance and points out that February’s small sample sizes can be misleading. He noted that UF Law is consistently among the top schools in the state when the handful of UF Law February results are combined for an annual average with the hundreds of UF Law July test takers. (For more details, see the Dean’s Message at http://tinyurl.com/bmtjtfz.)

“I’m always surprised how results on the spring bar exam are sometimes described since so few graduates take the February test compared to the July test. Any mathematician knows the law of small numbers makes these results highly unreliable as a basis for comparing schools,” said Jerry. “I am particularly disappointed that publicity tends to stress percentages rather than numbers, since that gives underserved validity to the results by implying that similar numbers of test-takers participate in the February and July exams.”

To ensure consistency in evaluating bar exam performance, Jerry recommends that February and July exam results in the same year be combined to ensure accurate class-by-class comparisons. These results are what the American Bar Association asks law schools to report for accreditation purposes.

“Frankly, it’s like evaluating how well a baseball player hits in a 162-game season by only counting his at-bats in 10 games,” Jerry said. “That’s essentially what it is like to look at the February bar results in isolation.”

And overall, Jerry is happy with UF Law’s recent “seasons,” which put the school’s annual bar passage rate in first place among Florida law schools two out of the last three years, and second place the other year.

“Numerical analysis can be a helpful tool when evaluating the quality and progress of a school,” said Jerry. “But it is only one tool among many, and great care must be taken to understand the origin and context of any numbers used, particularly in rankings such as U.S. News and World Report, and to realize that numbers alone will never convey the true value of any institution.”

For more information:
Matt Walker, UF Law Communications
352-273-0650, mlwalker@law.ufl.edu

UF Law Professor Leonard Riskin sits with a meditation bell, a tool used in teaching mindfulness practices that help students and lawyers deal better with stress and enhance performance and satisfaction. Riskin received the ABA’s Section of Dispute Resolution award for Outstanding Scholarly Work last weekend in Chicago.

GAINESVILLE, Fla. – University of Florida Levin College of Law Professor Leonard Riskin was honored last weekend with the American Bar Association’s Section of Dispute Resolution award for Outstanding Scholarly Work.

Riskin, who is the Chesterfield Smith Professor of Law, accepted the prestigious award at the section’s 15^th annual spring conference in Chicago.

Since coming to UF Law in 2007, Riskin has served as professor, mentor and director of the Initiative of Mindfulness in Law and Dispute Resolution, and senior fellow of the Institute for Dispute Resolution. The ABA honored him based on his extensive work in alternative dispute resolution with a focus on the perspectives that lawyers bring to the work.

“When I first started teaching in law school I noticed that there was a huge amount of suffering among law students, lawyers and clients. Some of the suffering, I thought, resulted from extreme adversarial perspectives and behavior,” Riskin said. “I thought that mediation was a way to reduce unnecessary adversarialism and suffering.”

Riskin began to write about and teach mediation in the early 1980s, and from that he became interested in mindsets lawyers use when addressing problems.

“A lot of my work has been designed to encourage or help law students, lawyers and mediators become more aware of what mindset they are using, and how that mindset affects the way they understand problems and the way they might try to deal with them,” Riskin said.

Riskin is the third recipient of the ABA Dispute Resolution Section’s award for Outstanding Scholarly Work since its creation in 2011. Harvard Law School professor Frank E.A. Sander and Georgetown University professor Carrie Menkel-Meadow received the award in years past.

“I feel honored because I very much admire the two previous recipients,” Riskin added. “I’m very lucky to have studied and worked with wise and thoughtful people from whom I learned a great deal. I especially appreciate working with my UF faculty colleagues and students.”

For more information:
Matt Walker, UF Law Communications
352-273-0650, mlwalker@law.ufl.edu

Black Law Students Association President Brandon Campbell (2L) speaks during a presentation at a UF Law Board of Trustees meeting. UF Law’s BLSA chapter has been named best in the nation. (Photo by Haley Stracher)

GAINESVILLE, Fla. – The University of Florida Levin College of Law Black Law Students Association took home two prestigious awards at the annual National Black Law Students Association Convention in Atlanta March 6-10.

UF Law BLSA, also known as the W. George Allen chapter, was recognized as the national chapter of the year, beating out over 200 other groups. It is the National Black Law Students Association’s highest award and honor given to any chapter.

“This award shows yet again that UF is among the top law schools in the country, and that UF’s excellence is consistent in many areas,” said BLSA President Brandon Campbell (2L).

The group submitted a three-part application then competed for the title of regional chapter of the year. After being named chapter of the year for the southern region, UF Law BLSA went on to compete nationally.

The last step in the process included an interview in which Campbell answered questions posed by two NBLSA board members.

Campbell highlighted all of the community service outreach that BLSA spearheaded throughout the year, including the state of the Black Law Student town hall meeting, diversity initiatives with pre-law students across the country, the 50-year anniversary celebration of W. George Allen, UF Law’s first black graduate and UF BLSA’s namesake, and a professionalism week program.

“The leadership of our UF Law BLSA chapter has been superb these past years, so the chapter being recognized as the national chapter of the year is a well-deserved and exciting honor,” said UF Law Dean Robert Jerry.

Meanwhile, BLSA’s negotiations team won first place in the international negotiation competition held during the convention. The winning team consisted of Atiya Munroe (2L) and Laselve Harrison (2L).

“Getting one national title is a rare achievement for any law school, so the BLSA Negotiations Team also winning the national championship creates an extraordinary combination of awards, demonstrating that UF Law’s students have succeeded in making our BLSA chapter one of the very best, and I would argue the number one chapter, in the country,” said Jerry.

Campbell believes the awards are also representative of the movement toward diversity in education.

“This award is a major step in the right direction, not only for BLSA, but for the advancement of diversity at UF,” he said.

As for what the future has in store, BLSA has already established a conference in September, which will include every chapter in Florida and chapters in Puerto Rico and other states.

“I am fully confident that those coming after me will be able to continue BLSA’s model of excellence,” Campbell said.

The members of BLSA give special thanks to Donald Pritchett and Eugene Pettis for their annual endowments to UF BLSA. BLSA would also like to thank its graduate adviser, Katheryn Russell-Brown; the Center for Race Relations; the Law College Council; and the Center for Career Development for sponsoring its trip to Atlanta and supporting its activities this year.

For more information:
Matt Walker, UF Law Communications
352-273-0650, mlwalker@law.ufl.edu

“Gay Marriage and the Promise of Equality” will be at noon in the Chesterfield Smith Ceremonial Classroom, HOL 180, with a book signing immediately following. The talk is free and open to the public. Parking restrictions in the green areas at the law school will be lifted for the event.

Sachs’ career as a human rights activist started in his student days at the University of Cape Town, when he took part in the Defiance of Unjust Laws Campaign. He devoted his law practice to defending people charged under racist statutes and repressive security laws. Many faced the death sentence. He himself was raided by the security police, subjected to banning orders restricting his movement and eventually placed in solitary confinement without trial for two prolonged spells of detention. In 1988, Sachs was the victim of a car bomb attack carried out by South African security agents, losing an arm and the sight in one eye.

During the 1980s and early 1990s Sachs was centrally involved in drafting the African National Congress’ proposed constitution for a new democratic South Africa. As a member of the Constitutional Committee and the national executive of the ANC he took an active part in the negotiations which led to South Africa becoming a constitutional democracy. He was appointed by President Nelson Mandela in 1994 to serve on the newly established Constitutional Court, and in 2005 he authored the court’s landmark decision requiring legal recognition of gay marriage in South Africa.

“We’re absolutely thrilled to have Albie Sachs speak at UF,” said UF Law Senior Legal Skills Professor Joseph Jackson. “He’s a remarkable person and a major player in the constitutional transformation of South Africa, who has helped that country heal the divisions of the past.”

Sachs’ talk is co-sponsored by UF Law’s Center on Children and Families and UF’s Center for African Studies.

Sachs will also be giving a talk at the Center for African Studies at 4 p.m. titled, “Combating Corruption: Kenya’s Efforts to Judge its Judges.” Visit the African Studies website for complete details, http://web.africa.ufl.edu/.

For more information:
Joseph Jackson, UF Law Senior Legal Skills Professor
352-273-0882, jjackson@law.ufl.edu

The University of Florida Levin College of Law experts are available to comment on the legal issues raised by the upcoming cases.

Darren Hutchinson
Cell: 202-276-0146
Email: hutchinson@law.ufl.edu

Hutchinson is a visiting professor at UF Law and will join the faculty full time in the fall. He teaches and conducts research in the areas of constitutional law, racial justice, LGBT rights, and other civil rights issues. Hutchinson has written extensively about questions of racial inequality, sexual orientation and constitutional law. He has delivered numerous lectures at law schools and universities in the United States and abroad, and has published articles in some of the nation’s leading legal periodicals.

Joseph Jackson
Office: 352-273-0882
Email: jjackson@law.ufl.edu

Jackson is a senior legal skills professor at UF Law and associate director of the Center on Children and Families. In addition to gay and lesbian family law issues such as adoption and same-sex marriage, Jackson’s expertise extends to issues surrounding homelessness and restrictions on the provision of services to those in need.

Sharon Rush
Office: 352-273-0948
Cell: 352-256-2466
Email: rush@law.ufl.edu

Rush is UF Law’s associate dean for faculty development, the Irving Cypen Professor of Law, associate director for the Center on Children and Families, and co-founder of the Center for the Study of Race and Race Relations. Her areas of scholarship and teaching include constitutional law and comparative civil rights.

“We are pleased that we continue to be one of the best values available in legal education,” said UF Law Dean Robert Jerry, referring to UF Law’s high placement for quality and equally low placement for cost among all U.S. law schools. “We’re among the three most affordable law schools in the US News top 50, when taking tuition and cost of living into account.

“At the same time, I caution every year that US News and other rankings need to be considered in context and weighed along with other factors in evaluating institutional quality and fit, particularly when one considers the many factors not reflected in this ranking that make UF Law a leading law school,” Jerry said. “For example, we have a proven track record in providing leaders for the profession at both the national and state levels, and the prominence of our alumni in the federal and state judiciaries also sends a strong statement about our quality.”

In other national rankings, UF Law was fourth among public law schools in 2011 (eighth among all law schools in the nation) in the number of its graduates serving as federal district and circuit court judges.  More than 250 graduates serve as state appellate and trial judges in Florida, and many serve in those roles in other states as well. A 2012 Journal of Legal Education article titled “Where Do Partners Come From?” surveyed the NLJ 100 law firms and found that UF Law ranked 11th among publics and 29th overall in the number of alumni graduating from 1986 to the present serving as partners. A ranking by Super Lawyers magazine placed UF Law first in Florida, fourth among public schools, and eighth overall in “output,” i.e. the caliber of a school’s graduates.  A 2012 article from Legal Metrics ranking law schools based on the number of arguments by their alumni before the U.S. Supreme Court since 2000 placed UF Law in the top 10 nationally.

“That a large number of law schools hire our graduates as law professors is also a sign of the college’s strength,” said Jerry. A study published in the August 2011 Journal of Legal Education ranked UF Law in the top 33 (17 percent) of law schools nationwide, and as high as 22nd (11 percent) in one calculation, for the impact of its faculty on the law.

UF Law is also one of the top 10 law schools in the nation for Hispanics, according to Hispanic Business Review (seven times in nine years), and was ranked in 2012 as one of the top six schools for blacks in the South by On Being a Black Lawyer magazine.

It is unusual for a school to be so affordable, successful in both academia and the profession, and highly rated in such diverse areas.

“Thanks to our exceptional faculty and outstanding graduates, the UF Law Graduate Tax Program has ranked at the top of the U.S. News specialty tax area for as long as they have published the list, and remains the No.1 public school in this area,” said Associate Dean for Graduate Tax Mike Friel. “We are always gratified to see the program’s quality recognized in this way.”

ELUL Program Director Mary Jane Angelo said, “We are proud that UF’s Environmental and Land Use Law Program continues to be distinguished as a top program in this critical area. We have a large and dynamic program, and the faculty and students work very hard through projects like our annual Public Interest Environmental Conference, which attracted 250 participants to Gainesville this year, to make a genuine impact on current environmental issues.”

Jerry concluded, “The University of Florida is a quality school that cares about our students and offers them multiple paths to career satisfaction and success. We have state-of-the-art facilities and a beautiful campus, and we are part of one of the best and most comprehensive universities in the nation. The loyalty and influence of the Gator Nation’s law alumni cannot be overstated. Rankings like those published in the Journal of Legal Education and elsewhere offer interesting information for prospective students to consider and can help guide us in our continuing efforts to improve, but should be used as only one data point among many.”

For more information:
Matt Walker, UF Law Communications
352-273-0650, mlwalker@law.ufl.edu

The UF Journal of Law and Public Policy will examine this topic more closely at its annual Media Law Symposium on Thursday, March 14, in the Martin H. Levin Advocacy Center at the UF Levin College of Law. The event will include a reception at 11:30 a.m., followed by a panel discussion at noon. The discussion, which will include a question and answer period, will conclude at 2 p.m. The event is free and open to students, professors, practitioners and the public.

Panelists include UF Law Professor Lyrissa Lidsky; First Amendment and media law attorney Craig D. Feiser, attorney Kristen Rasmussen, who authored the amicus brief presented to the U.S. Supreme Court for the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press; and Col. Michael L. Smidt, staff judge advocate of U.S. Special Operations Command.

This symposium is sponsored by the Florida Free Speech Forum and the American Bar Association Law Student Division at UF Law.

CLE credit will be offered for this event.

For more information:
Matt Walker, UF Law Communications
352-273-0650, mlwalker@law.ufl.edu

Randy Barnett, the Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Legal Theory at the Georgetown University Law Center, will present the lecture, “Who Won the Obamacare Case (and Why Did So Many Law Professors Miss the Boat)?,” Friday, March 22 at 10 a.m.in the Martin H. Levin Advocacy Center . The event, which is free and open to the public, is sponsored by the Florida Law Review.

Barnett has written and commented extensively on the Affordable Care Act and represented the National Federal of Independent Businesses as their case against the ACA was presented before the Supreme Court last spring. In addition to the discussing the decision’s general implications, Barnett will look at fundamental misunderstandings he perceives among the legal academic community regarding the decision’s import. Barnett’s lecture precedes an article of the same name to be published in an upcoming edition of the Florida Law Review.

The Florida Law Review Dunwody Distinguished Lecture in Law series was established by the U.S. Sugar Corporation and the law firms of Dunwody, White, & Landon, P.A. and Mershon, Sawyer, Johnston, Dunwody & Cole in honor of Elliot and Atwood Dunwody. The honorees were brothers who dedicated their lives to the legal profession and who set a standard of excellence for The Florida Bar. As graduates of the University of Florida College of Law, they labored long, continuously and quietly to better the social and economic conditions in Florida.

The series is intended to perpetuate the example set by the Dunwody brothers by providing a forum for renowned legal scholars to present novel and challenging ideas.

An archived video of the Dunwody Lecture will be available at www.floridalawreview.com following the event.

For more information:
Laura Beard or Lauren Rehm, executive symposium editors of the Florida Law Review
352-273-0671, flrsymposium@gmail.com

“At Close Range: The Curious Case of Trayvon Martin,” will take place March 20, at the University of Florida Levin College of Law in the Chesterfield Smith Ceremonial Classroom, HOL 180. The panel presentations will be from 9 a.m. – 11:30 a.m. and Blow’s keynote lecture will be from noon – 1:30 p.m. The event is free and open to the public and law school parking restrictions will be lifted in the green lots.

The panels will look at a wide variety of issues raised by the case, from a multitude of academic perspectives. Some of the featured panels include “Jim Crow Riding High: The 21^st Century Assault on African-American Voting Rights in Florida,” “Half-Baked: Weed, Race and the Demonization of Trayvon Martin,” and “Racial Profiling, Security and Human Rights.”

“The Trayvon Martin case is a social touchstone precisely because it serves up topics we’re uncomfortable talking about in public, including race, crime, policing, interracial crime, use of deadly force, black crime victims, Southern race relations, media representations of race, and gun control,” said Katheryn Russell-Brown, director of the CSRRR and Chesterfield Smith Professor of Law. “The case offers an important opportunity for us to learn about, discuss and debate these myriad and overlapping issues. Our Spring Lecture event will contribute to the national discussion of the case and emphasize policy recommendations.”

The departments of political science; health services; philosophy; sociology, criminology and law; journalism and communications; history; English; anthropology, and African-American studies will all be represented. The academic papers, which comprise the basis for the panel discussions, will be compiled for the first installment in a new series in collaboration with UF Law’s Lawton Chiles Legal Information Center. The panel agendas and abstracts for the papers can be seen in the Collections of the UF Law Scholarship Repository at, http://scholarship.law.ufl.edu/csrrr_events/10thspringlecture/panels/. For more information regarding the spring lecture, please visit the CSRRR homepage, http://www.law.ufl.edu/academics/centers/csrrr.

The University of Florida Levin College of Law’s CSRRR 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.

About Charles Blow 

After graduating cum laude from Grambling State University, keynote speaker Blow joined The New York Times in 1994 as a graphics editor and quickly became the paper’s graphics director, a position he held for nine years. The Louisiana native went on to become the paper’s design director for news before leaving in 2006 to become the art director of National Geographic Magazine.

Blow often appears on CNN’s Piers Morgan Tonight, Starting Point and AC360. He has also appeared on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, the Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell and Hardball with Chris Matthews, Fox News’ Fox and Friends, the BBC and Al Jazeera, as well as numerous radio programs.

For more information:
Matt Walker, UF Law Communications
352-273-0650, mlwalker@law.ufl.edu

Yale and Arizona law professor Carol M. Rose will discuss, “Property Law and the Rise, Life, and Demise of Racially Restrictive Covenants,” at the sixth annual Wolf Family Lecture on the American Law of Real Property at the University of Florida Levin College of Law. The lecture will be March 13, at 11 a.m. in the Martin H. Levin Advocacy Center courtroom, and will also be available as a live webcast at http://mediasite.video.ufl.edu/Mediasite/Play/4775d77635a741deb45688dbd080d5fd1d. The event is free and open to the public.

The Wolf Family Lecture will offer valuable insights for property law students, as well as those interested in constitutional law and students involved with the Center for the Study of Race and Race Relations.

Rose is the Gordon Bradford Tweedy Professor Emeritus of Law, and Organization and Professorial Lecturer in Law at Yale Law School, and the Lohse Chair in Water and Natural Resources at the University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law. Her book, Saving the Neighborhood: Racially Restrictive Covenants, Law, and Social Norms (Harvard University Press), which she co-authored with Yale Law Professor Richard Brooks, will be available March 11.

The Wolf Family Lecture Series was endowed by a gift from UF Law Professor Michael Allan Wolf, who holds the Richard E. Nelson Chair in Local Government Law, and his wife, Betty. Wolf is the general editor of a 17-volume treatise, Powell on Real Property. The treatise is the most referenced real property treatise in the country and is cited regularly by the courts, including several citations in the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Wolf family’s strong ties to the University of Florida date back to the 1930s, when Wolf’s father, Leonard Wolf, was a UF undergraduate. Since that time, two more generations of his descendants have made their way to Gainesville to study and work.

Past scholars who have delivered the Wolf Family Lecture in the American Law of Real Property include Thomas W. Merrill, Charles Evans Hughes Professor of Law at Columbia Law School; Gregory S. Alexander, A. Robert Noll Professor of Law at Cornell Law School; Lee Fennel, Max Pam Professor of Law at the University of Chicago; Joseph William Singer, Bussey Professor of Law at the Harvard Law School; and Vicki L. Been, Boxer Family Professor of Law and director of the Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy at New York University School of Law.

For more information:
Matt Walker, UF Law Communications
352-273-0650, mlwalker@law.ufl.edu

Pettis will speak to the students about his legal career, leadership in the community, and personal ethics. His comments will encourage students to view the law as an integral part of their lives.  He will also touch on the role of lawyers, judges and law enforcement officers in the everyday lives of young people.

The Law and Justice Youth Conference will give area youth the tools that they can use to become active and affect positive change in their community. Using resources from Street Law, a nonprofit organization which creates teaching materials for law, democracy and human rights, the conference participants will engage in dialogue related to handgun facts and laws, and the intent and purpose of the law.

“This year’s conference will highlight the importance of civic action and provide a forum in which youth of Gainesville are shown how the law can be a vehicle of self-empowerment and positive change,” said Sheree Graham, president of the Josiah T. Walls Bar Association. “As local lawyers, it is important for us to continually encourage our youth to positively contribute to the community and create opportunities for them to interact closely with legal professionals.”

Pettis, who will be sworn in as president of The Florida Bar in June 2013, will be the first African-American in the bar’s history to serve in this position. A co-founder of Haliczer Pettis & Schwamm, Pettis focuses his practice in the areas of medical malpractice, personal injury, commercial litigation and employment law. Pettis has served in numerous leadership positions including, chairman of the Judicial Independence Committee of The Florida Bar and vice-chairman of the South Florida Water Management District’s governing board, and currently serves on the Board of Trustees at the University of Florida’s Levin College of Law. Throughout his career, he has earned numerous legal awards and accolades, including being selected by his peers for inclusion in the 2010 and 2011 editions of The Best Lawyers in America in the specialties of medical malpractice law and personal injury litigation. Pettis has earned Martindale-Hubbell’s top “AV” rating for his high professional and ethical standards.

The Law and Justice Youth Conference is presented by the Josiah T. Walls Bar Association, in partnership with UF Law’s Black Law Student Association, Caribbean Law Student Association, Criminal Law Association, Association of Public Interest Law, The Florida Bar Young Lawyers Division Law Student Division, and Three Rivers Legal Services, Inc.

The Josiah T. Walls Bar Association and the Eighth Judicial Circuit Bar Association received funding from the Florida Bar Diversity Leadership grant to support the 2013 conference.

Established in 1977 and incorporated in 1997, the Josiah T. Walls Bar Association, Inc. is a voluntary minority bar organization that has grown from five to more than 30 attorneys from Alachua and surrounding counties. At its inception, JTWBA was a social networking organization, which culminated into a support system for African-American attorneys. In 2005, members decided to expand the organization by encouraging other minority attorneys to become members. Membership is comprised of attorneys, law professors, judges and law students who live or regularly practice in the 8th, 5th, and 3rd Judicial Circuits. In the spirit and legacy of Josiah T. Walls, the association is dedicated to promoting professional excellence, giving back to the community, and mentoring future lawyers. For more information, please visit http://www.jtwba.com/index.html.

The Florida Bar YLD Law Student Division provides law students from each Florida law school with a variety of activities designed to help connect students at Florida law schools with lawyers and leaders of The Florida Bar. Among such activities are networking and mentoring opportunities with Florida Bar members, ethics and professionalism training, pro bono and community service opportunities, and opportunities to participate in the activities and work of various sections of The Florida Bar. These activities are designed to enhance the law school experience and further the future interests of the legal profession. The division works to facilitate a smooth transition between law school and practicing law. For more information, please visit http://www.flayld.org/students/.

Contact Information:
Aubroncee Martin, Chairperson
2013 Law and Justice Youth Conference
Josiah T. Walls Bar Association
352-338-7369
martina@pdo8.org

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 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 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.”

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, UF Law student and PIEC co-chair. “Please come out and join us.”

For more information:

Matt Walker, UF Law Communications

352-273-0650, mlwalker@law.ufl.edu