Miami Law's Center for Ethics and Public Service will honor Miami Herald investigative reporter Julie K. Brown with the 18th annual William M. Hoeveler Award on Tuesday, October 20 at 12:30 pm.
The prestigious prize celebrates extraordinary members of the bar and bench, nonprofit organizations, and individuals distinguished by their long-standing dedication to ethics and public service. To honor Brown, the law school will host a virtual award ceremony.
"I could not be more honored to receive this award, named for a jurist who had the dignity and courage to stand up for injustices, even when it was sometimes frowned upon by the judicial establishment," said Brown. "It's more important today, than ever, to take the path less traveled. Judge Hoeveler (who, like me, is an alumnus of Philadelphia's Temple University) knew better than anyone the importance of being on the right side of history. Unfortunately, there are still people here in South Florida who were involved in the horrible miscarriage of justice in the Jeffrey Epstein case who remain on the wrong side of history.''
Brown is best known recently as the reporter who broke and owned the sex trafficking story behind Jeffrey Epstein, “Perversion of Justice,” earning her multiple awards including a 2018 George Polk award for justice reporting, and leading to the resignation to U.S. Secretary of LaborAlex Acosta. It was her second Polk; her first was in 2014 for reporting on Florida’s treatment of mentally ill inmates.
Founded in 1996, the Center for Ethics and Public Service is a law school-housed experiential education, skills training, and community engagement program devoted to the values of ethical judgment, professional responsibility, and public service in law and society. The Center’s mission is to educate law students to serve their communities as citizen lawyers.
For 24 years, the Center has served as an incubator and an accelerator for numerous public service projects at the law school. The projects include clinics: Children and Youth Law Clinic, Community Lawyering Clinic, Health Law Clinic, Social Enterprise Clinic, and Environmental Justice Clinic; programs including the Dartmouth College Ethics Institute Internship Program, Professional Responsibility and Ethics Program, Street Law Program, and Joint College of Arts & Sciences Program on Law, Public Policy, and Ethics, UM Environmental Justice, Policy, & Science Consortium summer colloquia, and the documentary films in the Oral History & Documentary Film Project.
The Hoeveler Award was created in honor of the Honorable William M. Hoeveler, senior U.S. District Court judge and the inaugural recipient, as a lifetime achievement award for a lawyer or an organization of outstanding ethics and public service.
“UM Law’s Center for Ethics and Public Service is honored to confer this year’s Hoeveler award on Julie K. Brown as a tribute to her long and distinguished career as an investigative journalist and a champion of human rights in Florida and across the nation,” said Professor Anthony V. Alfieri, CEPS director and founder of the Historic Black Church Program and the Community Equity, Innovation, and Resource Lab.
Past awardees include former U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno, former Florida Supreme Court Chief Judge Rosemary Barkett, and Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernández Rundle, who has served since 1993.
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