Chesterfield Smith

The Chesterfield Smith Public Policy Research Endowment was established in 1999 as a permanently restricted research endowment committed to the creation of knowledge and insight that strengthens the state’s economy. The endowment allows the Florida Chamber Foundation to produce high quality, non-partisan, business-oriented research oriented toward ensuring Florida’s economic vitality. The reports underwritten by the endowment will build on the legacy of such groundbreaking reports as Cornerstone: Foundations for Economic Leadership; No More Excuses: What Business Must do to Help Improve Florida’s Schools; Transportation Cornerstone Florida: Moving Florida’s Economy into the 21st Century; Enterprise Florida: Growing the Future; International Cornerstone Florida: Building a Crossroads Economy; and New Cornerstone: Foundations for Florida’s 21st Century Economy.

The endowment was named after Chesterfield Smith, a former trustee of the Foundation and a long-time civic leader in Florida. “Citizen Smith,” as he was called in Tom Brokaw’s The Greatest Generation, was one of the country’s most prominent lawyers and often called “the conscience of the legal profession.” When presented with the Laurie D. Zelon Pro Bono Award in a formal ceremony in the Great Hall of the United States Supreme Court, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg remarked: “He has devoted his extraordinary talent and enormous energy to the improvement of the legal profession - to making the profession more honorable, more responsive to the people law and lawyers serve. He is, in sum, among the brightest, boldest, bravest, all-around most effective lawyers ever bred in Florida and the U.S.A.”