Faculty & Staff
Faculty
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Andrew Franz, J.D.ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF INSTRUCTION & UNDERGRADUATE COORDINATORPhone: (813) 974-6669 |
EDUCATION
Assistant Professor of Instruction Andrew Franz earned his B.A. in 1987 from, Austin College, Sherman, TX, where he majored in political science. He earned his J.D. from Tulane University in New Orleans, in 1990. His law school training focused on specialization in comparative law, jurisprudence, Constitutional law, and procedure. Instructor Franz has attended many Continuing Legal Education Seminars, including: Judge Advocate School, advanced trial counsel courses for military prosecutors, funded federal criminal practice seminars, and death penalty defense. During his time at the University of Pittsburgh, Franz participated in a five week NEH seminar on Rule of Law in Biddeford, ME, working with scholars such as Robert Ferguson, Paul Kahn and Austin Sarat. Since 2007, Franz has been awarded grants to audit summer courses concerning environmental law at Vermont Law School, the leading environmental law school in the nation. His itinerary there has included courses in environmental justice, water pollution, energy law, European environmental law and international trade and the environment.
PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE
As a lawyer, Franz served as an Assistant Judge Advocate in the U.S. Air Force for six years. In that position he prosecuted about forty criminal cases with significantly higher than average conviction rates, served as Chief of Military Justice at a high profile base overseeing prosecutions by other JAGs, discharge hearings, Article 15s and reprimands. In that capacity, Franz also offered training and advice to Base Security Police and Air Force Special Investigations. His other JAG duties included specializations in Law of Armed Conflict training, military contracts, and claims against the Air Force by civilians and civilian institutions and legal assistance. Following his honorable discharge in the rank of captain, Franz ran his own law office in Gulfport, MS, where, among other fields he practiced as an indigent defender in a contract/bid system in Harrison County, as a privately retained criminal defense attorney, a privately retained military law defense attorney and as a constitutional law practitioner. During his time in private practice, Franz defended approximately three hundred felony cases, including clients charged with armed robberies, rapes, child abuse, drug distribution, burglaries, arson, organized crime and capital crimes. Many of these went to trial, with a substantially higher than average percentage resulting in acquittals.
UNIVERSITY POSITIONS and ACADEMIC INTERESTS
Assistant Profeesor of Instruction Franz arrived at University of South Florida having left a faculty post at University of Pittsburgh, which he held full time for seven years. Prior to that, Franz served as an adjunct at Pitt for two years. At Pitt, Franz generally taught courses such as Crime Law and Public Policy, Organized Crime, Violent Crime, Constitutional Law, Environmental Crime, Comparative Criminology, American Courts, Senior Thesis, and Criminology. He also served as a Pre-Law advisor, enabling many students to pursue their visions. In that capacity, Franz attended a number of sanctioned pre-law conferences and maintained a large number of contacts. He also served on a number of Pitt’s faculty governance bodies and has published a number of scholarly articles, reviews and a book chapter. His areas of scholarship interest includes habeas corpus laws, due process, environmental justice, international criminal law, comparative criminal law enforcements and non-enforcements, foreign and domestic rule of law failures, ethics, water pollution and climate change, and courts handling of and dealing with new or unusual types of criminal cases and legal principles. His methodological approaches are critical/conflict and include descriptivism, interpretive content analysis, case studies and comparative analysis. For service in his discipline, Franz has reviewed a number of articles, books in process, proposed books and book chapters and has presented over sixteen papers in the past eight years, particularly, but not limited to, the American Society of Criminology and the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences annual conventions.