The University of New Mexico

NEWS RELEASE

Contact:  Benson Hendrix, 277-1816
Email: bhendrix@unm.edu

May 29, 2009

First Minority Scholar Elected President of Law & Society Association

Mexican American scholar and University of New Mexico Law Professor Laura E. Gómez becomes president of the Law and Society Association Saturday, May 30.  Gómez is the first minority scholar and one of the youngest elected to head this international association of scholars.

A global organization of university scholars who study law in its cultural context, the Law and Society Association publishes the Law & Society Review, the leading journal in the field, sponsors annual conferences and educational workshops, and fosters development of academic programs in law and society. Past presidents include scholars from the University of Michigan, the University of California, Berkeley, the University of Wisconsin and Stanford University.

Felice Levine, who in 1987 became the Law and Society Association’s first female president and is executive director of the American Educational Research Association, said of Gómez: “Laura is more than a notable scholar with a track record of accomplishments beyond her years. She has already made major contributions not just through her formal service to the Law and Society Association, but also through her passionate commitment to mentoring the next generation, her comprehension of excellence and inclusiveness, and her vision of law and society growing to cultivate scholarship addressed to the most pressing issues of our time.”

Gómez was born in 1964 in Roswell, N.M., and raised in Albuquerque, where she attended public school. None of her four Mexican American grandparents – three of whom were born in the U.S. and one of whom came to the U.S. as a young Mexican immigrant child – had more than a few years of elementary education, and her parents was the first in their respective families to graduate from high school. Both her parents earned bachelor’s degrees from the University of New Mexico.

In 1986, Gómez graduated with honors from Harvard College, where she was a Harry S Truman Scholar, president of the Mexican American student organization and a masthead editor of the Harvard Crimson. Following graduation from college, Gómez worked as a legislative aide to Senator Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) during his freshman term in the U.S. Senate.

She earned her law degree from Stanford in 1992 and her Ph.D. in sociology in 1994.  She was a law clerk to Federal Judge Dorothy W. Nelson of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit before being hired by the University of California, Los Angeles as a law professor.  She taught at UCLA for 12 years before coming to UNM. 

Since 2006, she has taught at UNM, where she holds a joint appointment in both the law school and the College of Arts & Sciences. Gómez has published numerous articles and two books,” Manifest Destinies: The Making of the Mexican American Race,” published in 2007, and “Misconceiving Mothers: Legislators, Prosecutors and the Politics of Prenatal Drug Exposure,” published in 1997

“It is a great honor for UNM to have a faculty member elected to head such a well-respected scholarly association,” said Brenda Claiborne, dean, UNM College of Arts & Sciences.