Several friends have asked for a copy of the speech I gave last night accepting the Pete Weitzel Award from the First Amendment Foundation. Here it is: I feel very fortunate that Gerald Kogan is here in the audience tonight. Very candidly – without Chief Justice Kogan, I would not be receiving this award. In fact, … Continue reading On Accepting the 2018 Pete Weitzel Award
Three years ago today, the great Florida civil rights lawyer and judge Leander J. Shaw, Jr., lay in state in the rotunda of the Florida Supreme Court. He became the Court's first African-American Chief Justice in 1990. It was the crest of a 20-year tenure that began when he joined the state's highest tribunal in … Continue reading Remembering Justice Leander Shaw
Justices of the Florida Supreme Court live their lives in the glare of publicity. Some would call it a fish bowl. Twenty-one years ago today, a West Palm Beach judge named Barbara J. Pariente was suddenly cast inside Tallahassee's intrusive world of public scrutiny. It happened on December 10, 1997, when Governor Lawton Chiles named her … Continue reading On the Retirement of Justice Barbara Pariente
It now is a generation in the past. Exactly twenty years ago today. On December 8, 1998, a lower appeals court judge and former Central Florida assistant attorney general named Peggy A. Quince was elevated to the Florida Supreme Court by Governor Lawton Chiles. She was the first African-American woman ever appointed. Her life had … Continue reading On the Retirement of Justice Peggy Quince
One of the hallmarks of work at the Florida Supreme Court is how much the judges and staff come to view each other as family. Today, our extended is remembering one of our beloved courthouse kindred, Betsy Hill. Betsy worked for many years in our Court Clerk's Office. She was loved for her gentle kindness, … Continue reading The Florida Supreme Court Family
The Florida Supreme Court's decision earlier this year to place live video and audio of all its oral arguments on Facebook Live continues to be studied and praised. Florida's Public Radio network through its Miami affiliate WLRN recently took a look at how this new form of governmental transparency is working, even as courts around … Continue reading Open Courts & Justice Gerald Kogan
Today's front page of the Tallahassee newspaper took my breath away. It made me think about Florida's last statewide election recount 18 years ago when its botched presidential race led to the series of legal cases known to history as Bush v. Gore. So I pulled out some photos from the Florida Supreme Court archives. … Continue reading Florida Recount 2018
The Longest Table, October 14, 2018 I love this photograph. It shows the "Longest Table," an occasional event when Tallahassee comes together as a community to break bread and give thanks. The City decided to hold one yesterday after the stress and strains of Hurricane Michael last week. The long table set out for a … Continue reading The Longest Table
In the law, ripples from the past moving forward in time are called precedents. Earlier events set models for handling future events. History influences the present. What's past is prologue. So it would be in 1857 when the Florida Supreme Court handed down its landmark decision in a quarrelsome case involving one of early Tallahassee's … Continue reading Florida Law & the Crooms of Goodwood Plantation
Robert Craig Waters 