Lady Justice

podcastOPTalks
Written By Open Plaza

Historian Dr. Felipe Hinojosa talks to attorney Luz Herrera about her legal journeys—from study and practice to teaching and research

lady justice / no border (2007) by Austin Kleon 

 
 

In this episode of OP Talks, historian Dr. Felipe Hinojosa talks to attorney and law professor Luz Herrera about growing up in Southern California as the only child of Mexican immigrants, attending Stanford University and Harvard Law School, and her journey from practicing law to teaching it.

Before joining academia, Herrera, now a Professor of Law and Associate Dean for Experiential Education at the Texas A&M School of Law, ran her own practice. She also founded Community Lawyers, Inc., a non-profit organization that encourages access to affordable legal services and develops innovative opportunities for legal professionals in underserved communities. Herrera says she learned from personal experience, especially from her time as an undergraduate at Stanford and the importance of having a supportive infrastructure.

"Stanford had really invested in ensuring that their first-gen students and students from underrepresented backgrounds had the support systems they needed to survive,” she recalls. “I was able to thrive, not just survive. For me, that made all the difference…I have very fond memories of the education at Stanford, and it had a lot to do with having the mentors and the support system in place and having a community that felt comfortable and similar to the one I knew.”

Herrera has conducted research on legal-service delivery in the Rio Grande Valley, the southernmost part of the Texas-Mexico border. She is the lead author on “Evaluating Legal Needs,” a study published in the Notre Dame Journal of Law, Ethics and Public Policy 175 (2022) that looked at resident attitudes towards lawyers and what residents are doing to address their legal needs. That region was an interesting choice, Herrera notes, because it has one of the largest Latino populations in the United States, which allowed them to create a national legal needs study that looked at how Latinos interact with the legal system. Herrera and her team – which included Dr. Hinojosa, who interviews her in this episode – found that several language and cultural barriers have kept Latinos from accessing the legal system.

The study found a lack of information and resources in the region. The researchers also encountered attitudes like the idea that, if one has a problem, one figures it out at home, because “qué vergüenza, that people know you are having a problem.” But there was also the “general distress and a bit of fear” that mixed-status families felt in such a highly militarized part of the country.

“You might have a family member who’s undocumented, and you’re exposing yourself to a legal system that isn’t always seen as something that can help you but something that can harm you,” Herrera says of their findings among participants involved in the study. “The majority of the people we talked to did not have documentation concerns for themselves. They could have a member of their family who was undocumented, and so they were more concerned about engaging the legal system because of that.”

 
Featured
Luz Herrera

Luz E. Herrera is a Professor of Law and Associate Dean for Experiential Education at Texas A&M School of Law. As dean, Herrera promotes entrepreneurial efforts to address the access to civil justice gap. Before entering academia, Herrera ran her own practice and founded Community Lawyers, Inc., a non-profit organization that encourages access to affordable legal services and develops innovative opportunities for legal professionals in underserved communities. These experiences have influenced her scholarship, which promotes legal “low bono” service-delivery models and post-graduate support programs for lawyers starting their own law firms. Herrera currently serves as a special advisor for the American Bar Association’s Commission on Hispanic Legal Rights and Responsibilities. Prior to her current position, Herrera was the Assistant Dean for Clinical Education, Experiential Learning and Public Service at UCLA School of Law. She has also taught as a visiting clinical professor at the University of California, Irvine School of Law, as an assistant professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, as a visiting professor at Chapman University School of Law, and as a Senior Clinical Fellow at Harvard Law School. In her various academic positions, Herrera encouraged innovation and promoted access to justice through experiential learning. Her honors include an Academic Leadership Award from the Hispanic National Bar Foundation and Notre Dame Law School’s Graciela Olivarez Award. Herrera holds an AB in Political Science from Stanford University and a JD from Harvard Law School, where she served on the Editorial Board of the Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review.

Featured
Felipe Hinojosa

Born and raised in Brownsville, Texas, Dr. Felipe Hinojosa is the John and Nancy Jackson Endowed Chair in Latin America & Professor of History at Baylor University. He was formerly on faculty at Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas, where he also served as Director for the university's Carlos H. Cantu Hispanic Education & Opportunity Endowment. His research areas include Chicana/o and Latina/o Studies, American Religion, Race and Ethnicity, and Social Movements. Prof. Hinojosa serves on the Advisory Board for the interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed, and online moderated forum Latinx Talk. His work has appeared in Zócalo Public Square, Western Historical Quarterly, American Catholic Studies, Mennonite Quarterly Review, and in edited collections on Latina/o Studies. Dr. Hinojosa’s first book, Latino Mennonites: Civil Rights, Faith, and Evangelical Culture (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014) was awarded the 2015 Américo Paredes Book Award for the best book in Mexican American and Latina/o Studies by the Center for Mexican American Studies at South Texas College. His most recent book, Apostles of Change: Latino Radical Politics, Church Occupations, and the Fight to Save the Barrio (University of Texas Press, 2021), is set in four major cities (Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, and Houston), where, in 1969 and 1970, Latino radical activists clashed with religious leaders as they occupied churches to protest urban renewal, poverty, police brutality, and racism in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Along with Sergio M. González and Maggie Elmore, he co-edited Faith & Power: Latino Religious Politics Since 1945 (New York University Press, 2022). Dr. Hinojosa holds a BA in English from Fresno Pacific University, and MA in History from University of Texas Pan American, and a PhD in History from the University of Houston.

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