National Judicial College to honor former Chief Justice Barkett in Miami April 27
Judge Rosemary Barkett
Former Florida Chief Justice Rosemary Barkett will be among five legal luminaries honored for helping to uphold the rule of law when The National Judicial College (NJC) celebrates its 60th anniversary at an event in Miami next month.
Based in Reno, Nevada, the NJC is the country’s oldest, largest, and most widely attended school for judges. Each year it educates judges from all 50 states. The categories of judges it serves, including state trial, administrative law, military, and tribal decide more than 95% of cases in this country.
In 1984 Barkett became the state’s first female justice when she was appointed to the Florida Supreme Court by Gov. Bob Graham. In 1992, she was chosen by her colleagues to become the first female chief justice. From 1994 to 2013, she served as a judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit. Since 2013 she has been a member of the Iran–United States Claims Tribunal located in The Hague, Netherlands.
In 2023, the judicial college is celebrating the 60th anniversary of its founding with six special programs from coast to coast. The first took place in January in Los Angeles. Each is organized around a justice-related theme. For the Miami event, April 27, the theme is Justice for All…Upholding the Rule of Law.
At the Miami event, Barkett will be one of five individuals to receive the College’s Making the World a More Just Place Award. After the award ceremony there will be a panel discussion among the five moderated by Miami attorney Edward Blumberg, chair of the NJC’s Board of Trustees and a former president of The Florida Bar.
The other honorees are:
- Judge DeAndrea Gist Benjamin. In February of this year Judge Benjamin was confirmed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. She previously served 12 years as a judge of the South Carolina Circuit Court for the Fifth Circuit and for seven years before that on the bench of the City of Columbia (South Carolina) Municipal Court.
- Judge Thomas B. Griffith. Formerly a member of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, Judge Griffith is special counsel at Hunton Andrews Kurth. He was a member of the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States and a co-author of “Lost, Not Stolen: The Conservative Case that Biden Won and Trump Lost the 2020 Presidential Election.”
- Senator Doug Jones. A former U.S. senator and U.S. attorney for Alabama, Jones is counsel at ArentFox Schiff and a distinguished senior fellow with the Center for American Progress. In the early 2000s, he successfully prosecuted two members of the Ku Klux Klan for their roles in the 1963 white supremacist terrorist bombing of a Birmingham church that left four Black girls dead. In 2022 he guided Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson through the nomination and Senate confirmation process.
- Solicitor General Neal Katyal. A former acting solicitor general of the United States, Katyal is a partner at Hogan Lovells in Washington, D.C. By the time of the Miami event, he will have likely argued his 50th case before the Supreme Court of the United States. He is a familiar face on cable news programs and has played himself on Netflix’s “House of Cards” and Showtime’s “Billions.”
Blumberg is a founder and partner in the Miami trial law firm of Deutsch Blumberg & Caballero, a past president of The Florida Bar, and a former member of the Florida Bar Board of Governors and the House of Delegates of the ABA.
The overarching theme of the college’s 60th anniversary celebrations is “JUSTICE FOR ALL … Our Pledge for 60 Years.”
“Nothing is more important in a democracy than preserving the rule of law, and nothing is more critical to preserving the rule of law than having the most competent, well-trained, diverse judiciary overseeing the cases that are argued and decided under our complex system of laws,” said Benes Aldana, a retired former chief trial judge of the U.S. Coast Guard and president of the college since 2017.
The NJC’s remaining anniversary programs will be held later this year in New York City, Seattle, Las Vegas, and in the college’s headquarters city of Reno, Nevada.
