School of Law Hosts Preliminary Round of National Moot Court Tournament

The American Moot Court Association (AMCA) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to the development of legal skills among undergraduate students. To achieve this, the AMCA organizes and hosts national moot court competitions where students can apply their legal knowledge and refine their advocacy skills. These competitions are modeled after U.S. Supreme Court proceedings.

This year, the UNM School of Law was one of four schools nationwide selected to host a Preliminary Round of the National Tournament. The event was held January 25-26, 2025, and brought 32 teams and 62 competitors from schools across the country to Albuquerque. Schools in attendance included Baylor University, Benedictine College, Berea College, California State University, Long Beach, Colorado Christian University, San Francisco State University, Texas Christian University, University of California, San Diego, United States Air Force Academy, University of California, Berkeley, University of California, Davis, University of California, Santa Barbara, University of North Texas, and University of Southern California.

The School of Law tournament began with three rounds of preliminary competition before advancing to its elimination stages. The final matchup featured students from the University of California, Berkeley, and students from the University of North Texas. After a well fought tournament, the University of California, Berkeley took first place, while the University of North Texas finished as the runner-up. The top oralist award went to Micah Frazho from the University of California, Berkeley. The final round was judged by a notable panel of legal professionals including Judge Shammara Henderson, Judge Megan Duffy, Judge Gerald Baca, Justice Michael Vigil, and Retired Judge Michael Bustamante, whose expertise and insights contributed to the high level of competition and excellence displayed throughout the event.

The tournament not only highlighted the strength of undergraduate orators but also allowed the School of Law to engage with potential future law students, showcasing the School’s legal education and resources. This initiative aligns with broader efforts of the School to introduce talented students to the alumni community and offer them a glimpse into the experience that lies ahead in their legal careers.

Judge Baca stated, “I think the National Moot Court Tournament held at the UNM School of Law was a great event. It was well-run, the student advocates were exceptional, and as a result, the students gained invaluable knowledge, insight, and experience into the practice and procedure of the appellate courts - knowledge and experience upon which they can found their own career paths in the law. I hope the UNM School of Law continues to support and host preliminary rounds as well as a final round of this tournament because it not only promotes our amazing law school but it exposes our New Mexico students to quality programs such as this. I look forward to serving as a judge in this competition again.”

The UNM School of Law thanks all student participants, moot court coaches, dedicated alumni and community volunteers, and law student volunteers.

The School of Law Utton Center Sponsors the 2nd Annual Socorro Community Listening Session on Water

Seventy-five community members gathered on March 1, 2025, at the Socorro Fairgrounds for a matanza and an afternoon discussion regarding the water management challenges facing the San Acacia Reach of New Mexico’s Middle Rio Grande.

Sponsored by the Utton Center at the UNM School of Law, the event was the second annual gathering to bring community members together to learn and share their thoughts about the valley’s water challenges.

“With less water flowing down the Rio Grande each year, it’s important for communities to come together to learn and share their thoughts about what they value most and how we can all collaborate in the face of climate change,” said the Utton Center’s John Fleck, who moderated the afternoon’s discussions.

Running from the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District’s (MRGCD) San Acacia Diversion Dam to Elephant Butte Reservoir, this stretch of the Rio Grande is home to the community of Socorro and farming operations up and down the valley, from the alfalfa fields of Indian Hill Farms to the chile fields around San Antonio. It also is home to the Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge.

The audience heard from MRGCD Water Operations Manager Anne Marken about the challenges the district faces in providing irrigation water with a growing water debt under the Rio Grande Compact to farms and communities in southern New Mexico and Texas. The audience also heard from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation’s Ken Richard about the bureau’s Lower San Acacia Reach Improvement Project. The project will reroute the river in an attempt to move water more efficiently through the stretch of river downstream of Bosque del Apache. Over time, this stretch of the Rio Grande has become choked with sediments, making it difficult for central New Mexico to meet its obligation under the Rio Grande Compact to deliver water to Elephant Butte Reservoir.

Laila Sturgis from the New Mexico Bureau of Geology and New Mexico Tech shared that they are studying the hydrology of the Rio Grande between San Acacia and Fort Craig, focusing on surface water and ground water interactions. They are seeking local well owners to participate in the study by allowing depth-to-water measurements. If interested, please contact Aquifer Mapping Program Manager Laila Sturgis at 575-835-5327.

The event was co-sponsored by the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District, New Mexico Tech, the City of Socorro, Friends of the Bosque del Apache, Valencia Soil and Water Conservation District, and Amigos de la Sevilleta.

School of Law Professor Emerita Participates in Discussion at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs

On February 4, 2025, the Program in Law and Public Policy (PILPP) at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs hosted a discussion titled “The Conflicts of Anti-Colonialism: A Tribal Right to Discriminate on the Basis of Sex?” The talk centered on a key issue that emerged in recent Supreme Court cases regarding Native American tribes’ sovereign rights. Last year, the Court heard three important cases concerning the authority of Native American tribes, one of which marked a significant victory for tribal sovereignty.

PILPP welcomed Audrey Martinez, a plaintiff in one of these Supreme Court cases, to discuss the tensions between respecting tribal choices and protecting individual rights, particularly in relation to gender-based discrimination in tribal membership rules. Alongside Martinez, the panel of speakers included New York Times best-selling author Julian Zelizer, former senior writer for The Wall Street Journal Josh Prager, Professor of Indigenous Studies in Anthropology J. Kēhaulani Kauanui, and UNM School of Law Professor Emerita Gloria Valencia-Weber.

Professor Emerita Valencia-Weber is a legal scholar, Regents Professor, and Henry Welhofen Professor at the UNM School of Law. She has played a pivotal role in the development of the Law and Indigenous Peoples Program, which is recognized as one of the top programs in the nation. Her research focuses on the evolution of U.S. federal Indian law, and she has published scholarship on Santa Clara Pueblo v. Martinez, the case at the heart of the discussion.

The case involves Julia Martinez, a member of the Native American Santa Clara Pueblo tribe in New Mexico, who sued the tribe over a membership ordinance that prevented membership for children of female members who married outside the tribe, while permitting the membership of children of male members in similar circumstances. Martinez argued that this ordinance violated the Indian Civil Rights Act (ICRA) and the Fourteenth Amendment. In a 7—1 decision, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the tribe, emphasizing tribal sovereignty and self-governance, with Justice Thurgood Marshall stating that membership rules are fundamental to a tribe’s social identity and autonomy. 

A full recording of the discussion can be viewed here.

School of Law Professor Jennifer Moore Publishes Her Book Women’s Work: Building Peace in War-Affected Communities of Uganda and Sierra Leone

Professor Jennifer Moore recently released a book titled Women’s Work: Building Peace in War-Affected Communities of Uganda and Sierra Leone, which was published earlier this month by the University of Pennsylvania Press.

In Women’s Work, Professor Moore documents a vision of peacebuilding and transformative justice as practiced in the daily lives of women farmers and microentrepreneurs who survived the prolonged and brutal civil conflicts in Northern Uganda and Sierra Leone that raged from the 1980’s until the early 2000’s. Through a series of in-person interviews with grassroots women activists conducted over yearly visits from 2016-2023, Professor Moore identifies common themes in their community-building efforts, focusing on collective survival through micro credit and collaborative agriculture, psychosocial healing through talking circles and celebratory dancing, and conflict resolution through mediation and women’s empowerment. These women reject a formula for transitional justice that prioritizes individual punitive approaches and instead advocate for a peacebuilding model that emphasizes collective material well-being, state accountability, and community reconciliation.

Professor Moore also highlights the essential role of legal equality for women and healthy partnerships between women and men in sustaining societal transformation. She notes that among the 20 peace-builders she interviewed most extensively, a common refrain was that while women were happy to lead peacebuilding efforts in their communities, they often felt that they were carrying the entire burden. Instead, their dream was to share the load equally with the men in their communities. Until that day, however, their greatest strength comes from one another, working together to create revolving credit funds, to mill and sell cassava flour, to mediate land disputes, or to conduct workshops on women’s inheritance and integrity rights.

Professor Moore earned her J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1987. Before joining the UNM law faculty in 1995, she worked for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) as an Associate Protection Officer in Conakry, Guinea, from 1991-1993, where she worked with refugees from the Liberian and Sierra Leonean civil wars; and as an Associate Legal Officer in in Washington, D.C., from 1993-1995, where she conducted training sessions for government officials and immigrant advocates on refugee law.

While in West Africa in the 1990’s, Professor Moore witnessed the resilience of refugees forced to flee armed conflict in their communities. Over 30 years later, many of those refugees have long since returned home, to pick up the pieces of their lives in the aftermath of peace accords, war crimes trials and truth and reconciliation hearings. Over this same period, as a law professor at UNM, Professor Moore became deeply interested in the aftermath of such crises. She began asking questions about how war survivors define for themselves what constitutes a peaceful and just transition to a healthy life.

As she continued her advocacy for refugees and explored the concept of transitional justice, Professor Moore built connections with women’s groups such as the Peace Mothers of Sierra Leone and the Women’s Advocacy Group of Northern Uganda. From 2016-2023, over a span of nearly ten years, she visited Uganda four times and Sierra Leone six times, conducting interviews with women activists in ten communities—five in Northern Uganda’s Acholi region and five in Sierra Leone’s Moyamba and Koinadugu Districts.

Reflecting back on the wisdom she has learned from the Peace Mothers and women advocates of Sierra Leone and Northern Uganda, Professor Moore shares this simple message, “Peace doesn’t come from on high or through governmental fiat. Nor is peace simply the absence of armed conflict. Peace is made piecemeal, through small and large acts of collective survival and conflict resolution. Women peacebuilders know that the peace they will see is largely the peace they create themselves, incrementally and devotionally, every day, through collective action in their communities.”

Professor Moore aims to have portions of Women’s Work translated into Acholi and Krio, the languages commonly spoken in Northern Uganda and Sierra Leone, respectively, so that the communities she has worked with and the friends she has made can have the chance to hear their voices represented.

Professor Moore is also the author of Humanitarian Law in Action within Africa, a book that examines how humanitarian and human rights law function as tools for conflict resolution and transitional justice in countries emerging from prolonged civil wars. This book was published by Oxford University Press in 2012.

Women’s Work Building Peace in War-Affected Communities of Uganda and Sierra Leone can be purchased here. Use code PENN-JMOORE30 for a 30% discount.

School of Law Students Participate in Mock Trial Competition

The UNM School of Law Mock Trial team competed in the 2025 Mock Trial Competition in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma this February. The team competed against 13 other law schools in the region (with a total of 26 teams participating).

Students preparing for mock trial practice for nearly six weeks before the competition. Third-year law student Marrisa Casados explains, “Each team member puts in lots of time and effort into the case by collaborating, strategizing, and overall working very hard.” The team is led by UNM School of Law Distinguished Alumnus Steve Scholl (’89), as well as other members of the legal community who volunteer their time. Casados shared, “It is great to see how many former mock trial competitors are happy to return to our law school and invest their own time into us to help us improve our skills.”

Third-year law student Trisha Romero explains, “Mock Trial has changed my life, what law I want to practice, and how I attack law in general. I have learned so much and it will be my favorite memory of law school.” In addition to honing practical skills, students are also exposed to trial practice and the skills needed for appearing in a courtroom.

The School of Law would like to thank the many alumni and community members that volunteer their time to help with the Mock Trial Competition.

School of Law Faculty and Students Present at Housing Education Day

On February 18, 2025, the ABC Community School Partnership, in collaboration with the City of Albuquerque, Bernalillo County, Albuquerque Public Schools, UNM School of Law, and New Mexico Legal Aid, hosted Housing Education Day. The event brought together over 100 educators, legal professionals, and advocates to discuss housing instability and homelessness prevention.

UNM School of Law Associate Dean Serge Martinez, Professor Allison Freedman, and third-year School of Law students Dante Gurule and Alicia Ulibarri delivered presentations and engaged with attendees on New Mexico’s eviction process. They provided in-depth information on the legal procedures and relevant rules and regulations in eviction hearings. They also shared valuable resources for those affected by housing challenges.

In addition, with support from the Chambers of Judge Jason Jaramillo at Metro Court, a live Zoom link was set up allowing attendees to observe Judge Jaramillo’s courtroom in real time. Associate Dean Martinez, Professor Freedman, and two attorneys from New Mexico Legal Aid guided participants through the proceedings, explaining key moments and processes as they occurred.

“This event really helped bring to life the experience of tenants facing eviction in Metro Court for dozens of our community partners, and it was a fantastic opportunity for our students to share their knowledge. We’re grateful for the support of the Court to make this happen and we feel fortunate to collaborate with so many outstanding local organizations,” said Associate Dean Martinez.

The event aimed to unite the community and strengthen support systems for families facing housing difficulties.

Join the School of Law for Game Night

Join us on April 10, 2025 for a Student, Staff, and Faculty Game Night! The event will be held in the forum, with pizza and games provided. Partners, friends, and kids are welcome. Feel free to bring your own games.

Please RSVP here.