I. Introduction

Professor Michael Olivas’s unexpected passing in 2022 brought forth a flood of tributes to his life and legacy.[1] However, celebrations of his illustrious career had begun long before his death. In Law Professor and Accidental Historian: The Scholarship of Michael A. Olivas (2017), colleagues paid homage to Professor Olivas’s cutting-edge scholarship and activism in the pursuit of justice for all.[2]

One of Professor Olivas’s lifelong projects was increasing the number of Latina/o professors. To shame some of the most prestigious law schools in the country to hire Latina/o professors,[3] Professor Olivas worked with the Hispanic National Bar Association to distribute what he ingeniously dubbed the “Dirty Dozen,” a list of twelve law schools without a Latina/o law professor.[4] Although the list came under attack from law school deans and professors,[5] no school wanted to be on it. Combined with Professor Olivas’s work in the trenches, the list slowly but surely produced results. While there were only about twenty Latina/o law professors when he began teaching,[6] the number had increased to more than 270 by 2020.[7]

Besides advocating for the hiring of Latina/os, Professor Olivas provided expert guidance on how to produce a “crop” of Latina/o law professors.[8] Carefully tending his crop, Professor Olivas spent countless hours over many years recruiting Latina/os to become law professors. To that end, he provided a wealth of information and personally supported candidates interested in faculty positions. Professor Olivas, for example, organized informational programs for Latina/o attorneys on the law professor hiring process.[9] Moreover, through countless telephone calls, and as times changed, e-mails, he enthusiastically recommended candidates to law school deans and chairs of faculty appointment committees.

Even after a Latina/o candidate landed a faculty position, Professor Olivas’s work was far from complete. Besides providing words of encouragement, he offered advice (some of it of a tough love variety), provided detailed comments on drafts of lengthy law review articles on topics running the gamut, and prepared scores of detailed reviews of scholarship for tenure and promotions. Latina/o law professors further benefited from Professor Olivas recommending them for conferences, endowed lectures, deanships, honors, and memberships in learned societies.

Moreover, Professor Olivas built an institutional structure to nurture Latina/o law professors. To provide them a sense of belonging, he annually compiled and distributed a list of Latina/o law professors, which might have been called the Michael Olivas honor roll.[10] He also initiated a dinner for Latina/o law professors, their families, friends, and supporters during the annual meeting of the Association of American Law Schools (AALS), the conference that regularly attracts the largest number of U.S. law professors.[11] The mass gathering of predominately white law professors can be intimidating, if not frightening, to the uninitiated. Serving as a sanctuary for Latina/o law professors, the dinner allows for friendships to develop, the exchange of information and stories, and the celebration of personal and professional milestones. Many professors find the dinner to be a highlight of the AALS annual meeting, with a Latina/o professor’s first one a memorable rite of passage. The community building importance of what might at first glance be considered a routine evening, should not be underestimated. As he did with the Latina/o law professors list, Professor Olivas eventually delegated organization of the dinner to others, which ensured that the traditions would live on.[12]

As well as helping to earn him the reputation as a “diversity activist,”[13] Professor Olivas’s tireless efforts to diversify the legal academy and provide support to scholars of color made him the unofficial, yet undisputed, “Dean of . . . (Latina/o) law professors.”[14] Writing for this tribute provides us the opportunity to bid another farewell to our beloved Dean. The occasion is bittersweet at best because Professor Olivas cannot read our words, correct our errors, and poke good-natured fun at sincere expressions of gratitude, admiration, and love. Thus, it is with the sting of profound loss that we write about him and his inspiring life’s work.

My contribution to this tribute highlights one of Professor Olivas’s many scholarly achievements, “Colored Men” and “Hombres Aquí”: Hernandez v. Texas and the Emergence of Mexican-American Lawyering (Michael A. Olivas, editor 2006).[15] Through a thoughtfully choreographed series of steps resembling those of a masterful director of films (one of his passions),[16] Professor Olivas “almost single-handedly resurrected [the Supreme Court’s decision in Hernandez v. Texas] from the archives of Texas legal history, and . . . played a huge role in bringing to America’s attention both the case and the role of the Chicano lawyers behind it.”[17] The decision established that Mexican Americans enjoyed the protections of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, the constitutional gold standard of legal protection against discrimination.[18]

This Article documents Professor Olivas excavation of Hernandez v. Texas, which was just one of his many efforts to publicize the long, and largely unknown, Mexican American fight against discrimination.[19] Part II lays out the genesis and significance of “Colored Men” and “Hombres Aquí,” its analysis of the breakthrough Supreme Court decision, and the stellar advocacy of the gritty team of Mexican american attorneys who successfully fought the formidable Texas legal establishment all the way up to the highest Court in the land. Part III shows how the book exemplifies Professor Olivas’s enduring commitment in his body of scholarship and activism to advocating for civil rights for all.

II. “Colored Men” and “Hombres Aquí”

In the nation’s long march toward a more racially just society, the Supreme Court decision in Hernandez v. Texas holds the same significance for Mexican Americans that the famous decision the same year in Brown v. Board of Education, which held unconstitutional the segregation of Black students in public schools, does for African-Americans.[20] The holding that Mexican Americans are protected by the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment might seem so obvious as to foreclose serious debate. However, lower courts before the Hernandez decision had ruled that the Clause exclusively protected African-Americans from discrimination and afforded no meaningful remedy to Mexican Americans, who courts classified as white.[21]

Hernandez v. Texas was the product of determined struggle.[22] Rather than suffer in silence, Latina/os historically have resisted discrimination. For example, Mexican Americans for generations have challenged school segregation and other inequalities in educational opportunities.[23] Indeed, before the Supreme Court decided Brown v. Board of Education, a U.S. court of appeals had found unlawful the segregation of Latina/o students in a California school district; “[s]everal amicus briefs, including one by Thurgood Marshall for the NAACP, had been filed on behalf of the parents seeking an end to segregation. That case, Mendez v. Westminster School District, was, according to a biography of Thurgood Marshall, a precursor to Brown v. Board of Education.”[24]

To bring Hernandez v. Texas into the nation’s civil rights consciousness, Professor Olivas relied on his academic experience to carefully formulate and masterfully execute an ingenious scholarly plan. After identifying the overlooked Hernandez v. Texas decision as worthy of scholarly analysis, Professor Olivas, as few others could have done, recruited professors, who in his informed judgment would thoughtfully analyze the decision, and organized a conference showcasing the research.[25] Accepting his proposal, the Chicano-Latino Law Review (later re-named the Chicanx-Latinx Law Review), a respected Latina/o civil rights law journal, published a symposium of conference papers.[26] Although most scholars at that point would have declared the project complete, Professor Olivas went the full nine yards and secured a book publication contract and refined the chapters into “Colored Men” and “Hombres Aquí,” which became the definitive scholarly work on Hernandez v. Texas.[27]

The historical dominance of the Black/white paradigm in U.S. civil rights scholarship contributed to the lack of attention paid to Hernandez v. Texas before Professor Olivas’s intervention. That approach focused almost exclusively on African-American civil rights issues.[28] In practice, “the Black–white paradigm . . . erases communities of color that do not fit within it, thus further marginalizing already sidelined communities.”[29] Although African-American civil rights concerns unquestionably demand the nation’s attention, other communities also have serious civil rights grievances. “[T]he legacy of a Black-White model of race relations accounts for Latinos’ limited success in drawing attention to their” civil rights issues and history of resistance.[30]

A. The Supreme Court Decision in Hernandez v. Texas

The only slave state created out of territory once part of Mexico, Texas has a unique, and at times, dark civil rights history. Professor Olivas cogently captured the emergence of the multifaceted Texas system of subordination of Mexican Americans:

Texas was the only southern state with a substantial Mexican population, so Jim Crow morphed into a form not found elsewhere in the agricultural South. The racial segregation practiced against African Americans took on its usual caste, metastasizing in its traditional ways of racial violence, social isolation, segregation, and, in the cotton culture, virtual slavery. But the racial separation practiced against Mexicans also took on additional, unique forms, including linguistic, national origin, political, and immigration-related oppression. These forms of oppression rendered Mexican American communities equally subservient, but in a different manner, to the larger Anglo population, even in those areas of Texas . . . where the Mexican population was the plurality or majority population.[31]

Against this historical backdrop, the Supreme Court decided Hernandez v. Texas. “Pedro ‘Pete’ Hernandez was a 24-year-old cotton picker who was convicted by an all-white jury of murdering 40-year-old Joe Espinosa, a tenant farmer, outside a bar one Saturday afternoon.”[32] Hernandez challenged the wholesale exclusion of Mexican Americans from juries in the court in which he was tried for murder:

[He] . . . argued that, in Jackson County, Texas, the state had systematically excluded persons of Mexican descent from jury commissions and petit and grand juries. The record showed that, for the county, more than fourteen percent of the population, and eleven percent of the people over age twenty-one, had Spanish surnames. The state of Texas admitted that there were eligible jurors of Mexican ancestry in the community. However, the state conceded that “for the last twenty-five years there is no record of any person with a Mexican or Latin American name having served on a jury commission, grand jury or petit jury in Jackson County.”[33]

Only weeks before deciding Brown v. Board of Education, Chief Justice Earl Warren delivered the Supreme Court’s unanimous opinion in Hernandez v. Texas.[34] As noted, the Court held that the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, one of the Reconstruction Amendments to the U.S. Constitution designed to dismantle the vestiges of slavery, barred the exclusion of Mexican American citizens from jury service.[35]

In a passage that provided a perfect title for a book on Hernandez v. Texas, the Supreme Court acknowledged discrimination against Mexican Americans:

[T]he testimony of responsible officials and citizens contained the admission that residents of the community distinguished between “white” and “Mexican.” The participation of persons of Mexican descent in business and community groups was shown to be slight. Until very recent times, children of Mexican descent were required to attend a segregated school for the first four grades. At least one restaurant in town prominently displayed a sign announcing “No Mexicans Served.” On the courthouse grounds at the time of the hearing, there were two men’s toilets, one unmarked, and the other marked “Colored Men” and “Hombres Aqui” (“Men Here”).[36]

The Supreme Court concluded what was readily apparent to an impartial observer—that only discrimination could explain the decades-long absence of Mexican Americans from local juries. As Chief Justice Warren bluntly explained, “it taxes our credulity to say that mere chance resulted in there being no [Mexican Americans] among the over six thousand jurors called in the past 25 years. The result bespeaks discrimination, whether or not it was a conscious decision on the part of any individual jury commissioner.”[37] Professor Juan F. Perea explained that “the Court recognized what had been painfully, and long, obvious to Mexican Americans . . . : that Mexican-Americans were subject to extreme, overt white racism.”[38]

Notably, the Court in Hernandez v. Texas did not require Pete Hernandez to prove that jury officers intended to discriminate against Mexican Americans.[39] Later equal protection decisions required proof of a discriminatory intent by government officials to prevail on a claim.[40] The absence of Mexican Americans from juries for decades in the Texas courts is a textbook example of why proof of an invidious intent should not always be necessary to prove an equal protection claim.

Hernandez v. Texas is an important chapter in the long struggle to end the exclusion of people of color from juries and convictions of criminal defendants of color by all-white juries.[41] It was far from the first challenge to the exclusion of Mexican Americans from juries. As the cover jacket of “Colored Men” and “Hombres Aquí” observes, “[t]here had been . . . efforts [before Hernandez v. Texas] to diversify juries, reaching back at least to the trial of Gregorio Cortez in 1901, and there would be later efforts to strike down unrepresentative juries, including efforts by the legendary Oscar Zeta Acosta in Los Angeles in the 1960s.”[42] Efforts today continue to pull juries from a cross-section of the community.[43]

However, the holding of Hernandez v. Texas went well beyond juries. Professors Ian Haney López and Michael A. Olivas encapsulated the breadth of the decision:

Brown v. Board of Education has been widely celebrated as the first decision in which the Supreme Court, . . . under the leadership of Chief Justice Earl Warren, set out to dismantle Jim Crow segregation. But it was not. That distinction belongs to an almost entirely forgotten jury exclusion case decided two weeks earlier: Hernandez v. Texas. Hernandez deserves the honor of being recognized as the first civil rights decision of the Warren Court. It is also the first Supreme Court case to extend the protections of the Fourteenth Amendment to Latinos, as well as the most resounding early triumph in the Latino struggle for civil rights.[44]

B. Pete Hernandez’s Mexican American Lawyers

Dedicated to enforcing the rule of law in the quest for justice for all, Professor Olivas was a law professor at heart. Effective lawyering was no less than a calling as well as a craft to him. Consequently, his scholarship methodically analyzed concrete legal questions and court decisions. Given Professor Olivas’s inclinations, the successful advocacy of the attorneys in Hernandez v. Texas no doubt piqued his interest. In his judgment, the victory in the high Court warranted examination of the advocacy of the Mexican American attorneys similar to that given to the work of the African-American lawyers in Brown v. Board of Education.[45]

As scholars documented the fight against Jim Crow by the legendary Thurgood Marshall and his team of African-American attorneys,[46] “Colored Men” and "Hombres Aquí" highlighted the outstanding advocacy of the dedicated band of Mexican American lawyers, including “one of the first Mexican Americans appointed to the federal bench in Texas and the first Mexican American law professor . . . .”[47] Before Hernandez v. Texas, “[n]o Mexican-American lawyers had ever tried a case before the United States Supreme Court, and [Pete Hernandez’s] lawyers were not even sworn into the Supreme Court bar.”[48] Path-breaking Mexican American lawyers secured a major civil rights victory for the Mexican American community.

C. The Book

Professor Olivas enlisted a distinguished group of scholars in law and other disciplines to write for “Colored Men” and “Hombres Aquí.”[49] Contributors analyzed Hernandez v. Texas from a variety of perspectives, including the constitutional implications of the decision, the racialization of Mexican Americans and other groups in the United States, and the long history of exclusion of people of color from juries.[50] As a bonus, the book included a lightly-edited transcript of the remarks at the Hernandez v. Texas conference dinner of federal Judge James de Anda.[51] As a junior attorney, he had conducted the legwork for Pete Hernandez’s defense team.[52] Judge de Anda reminisced about, among other things, collecting the evidence of the absence of Mexican Americans from juries and researching cases holding that Mexican Americans were white (a truly extraordinary conclusion given the widespread and unmistakable discrimination against them in Texas), and not protected by the Fourteenth Amendment.[53]

As noted previously, scholars presented their research on Hernandez v. Texas at a conference at the University of Houston Law Center, not far from the courthouse where the all-white jury convicted Pete Hernandez of murder.[54] Presenters “all took note of how many Brown v. Board [of Education] conferences and commemorations were being held. . . . [T]here were scheduled to be over fifty Brown symposia in its fifty year celebration . . . . Yet this was the only Hernandez symposium . . . .”[55] Accepting Professor Olivas’s proposal, the Chicano-Latino Law Review published a symposium of papers presented at the conference.[56] Last but not least, Professor Olivas secured a contract with Arte Público Press, a Latina/o publishing house, to publish the book of conference papers in its Hispanic Civil Rights Series.[57] His thoughtful introduction framed the essays; he concluded the book with a litigation history of the Hernandez v. Texas case, with briefs, records, and other case materials reproduced in appendices to the book.[58]

“Colored Men” and “Hombres Aquí” epitomizes Professor Olivas’s commitment to civil rights. He summoned a group of scholars, many of whom, like myself, he had mentored throughout their academic careers, and moved the project to completion. Scholars today regularly cite selections in the book analyzing Hernandez v. Texas, which at the time of its publication had been relatively unknown among scholars.[59]

III. A Dedication to Justice for All

“Colored Men” and “Hombres Aquí” typifies the social justice lens that Professor Olivas brought to his scholarship and other professional activities. His unwavering dedication to his craft produced volumes of civil rights scholarship, which earned him honors and accolades, including the William B. Bates Distinguished Chair of Law Emeritus at the University of Houston Law Center.[60] Professor Olivas analyzed, among other topics, Latina/o civil rights, immigration, education, and the role that lawyers can play in securing social change.[61]

A. Latina/o Civil Rights

The late California Supreme Court Justice Cruz Reynoso regularly joked that his “justice bone” fueled his commitment to civil rights.[62] With a similar personal constitution, Professor Olivas’s passion for Latina/o civil rights drove his scholarship. He became an “accidental historian”[63] who brought attention to the largely unknown and under-analyzed civil rights history of Latina/os in the United States. In that same vein, “Colored Men” and “Hombres Aquí” sheds light on the Supreme Court’s extension to Mexican Americans of a fundamental constitutional protection against discrimination.[64] Without his energy, academic acumen, and organizational skills, the 50th anniversary of Hernandez v. Texas likely would have gone unacknowledged.

B. Immigration

An influential immigration law scholar, Professor Olivas helped the field mature as a generally accepted area of scholarship. Before 1980, there was relatively little immigration law scholarship and immigration law was not a course taught at most law schools.[65] Professor Olivas wrote foundational scholarship that influenced generations of immigration scholars.[66] Moreover, his role in adding and mentoring Latina/o law professors increased the number of immigration law scholars.[67]

Professor Olivas’s scholarship appreciated the relationship between immigration, race, and civil rights. In a 2000 article, he incisively observed that “[m]ainstream immigration law scholarship fails to confront squarely the reality of the influence of race. . . . [M]ainstreaming the race critique of immigration law will assist in prodding scholars in the field to confront the issues and offer a better understanding of the law and its enforcement.”[68] Professor Olivas’s analysis spurred the emergence of race as a common lens through which to analyze immigration law and enforcement.[69] His appreciation of the racial impacts of the operation of the immigration laws is not surprising. Immigration historically has long been a bone of fierce contention in the U.S.-Mexico border region, where Professor Olivas was born and spent most of his life.[70] No doubt influenced by a life in the borderlands, his immigration scholarship critically questioned the often tragic impacts on vulnerable people of immigration law and enforcement.[71]

Among his body of immigration scholarship, Professor Olivas critically analyzed the U.S. government’s detention of migrant children[72] and the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Plyler v. Doe (1982)[73] striking down a Texas law that denied undocumented children an elementary and secondary public school education.[74] He also studied the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) policy, which provides relief from removal to undocumented immigrants who came to the United States as children, as well as legislation proposed numerous times in Congress known as the DREAM Act, which if passed, would have regularized the immigration status of many undocumented youth.[75]

At first glance, immigration might not appear to be implicated by Hernandez v. Texas, which did not involve immigrants but jury service by U.S. citizens of Mexican ancestry.[76] However, the discrimination against Mexican American citizens at issue in the case reflects how Latina/os regularly are treated as immigrants to the United States who, as such, have historically been denied the rights of full citizenship. Although U.S. citizens generally are required to serve on juries, Mexican American citizens before 1954, like noncitizens, were excluded from jury service.[77] Scholars have analyzed discrimination against “Latinas/os and Asian Pacific American citizens as a result of the conflation of race/ethnicity and ‘foreignness,’”[78] which stems from the fact that the Latina/o and Asian-American communities in part are composed of immigrants to the United States. The discrimination against Mexican American citizens at issue in the Hernandez v. Texas case demonstrates the power of the Mexican-as-foreigner stereotype.

Professor Olivas’s contributions to immigration law did not end with his scholarship. As he did for Latina/o law professors,[79] he built community among immigration law professors. Organizing the inaugural immigration law teachers conference in 1992, Professor Olivas established the tradition of a biannual event that today serves as a premier venue for presentations on immigration law scholarship and teaching.[80] He also regularly shared immigration law news and analysis on the ImmigrationProf listserv, a virtual community of immigration law teachers, and mentored many immigration law professors, myself included.[81]

C. Education

An influential education law scholar, Professor Olivas’s scholarship advocated for equal educational opportunity for all.[82] It often crossed over between education and immigration law. His influential writing on the groundbreaking decision in Plyler v. Doe, to offer one example, carefully analyzed the Supreme Court decision guaranteeing an elementary and secondary public-school education to undocumented students.[83] Professor Olivas also wrote extensively about laws and policies affecting the access of undocumented immigrants to public colleges and universities.[84]

Professor Olivas’s dedication to education undoubtedly fueled his interest in bringing attention to the neglected Supreme Court decision in Hernandez v. Texas as well as other chapters of Mexican American civil rights history. “Colored Men” and “Hombres Aquí” spread the word about the significance of the decision and the Mexican American attorneys’ excellent advocacy in the case.[85]

Among his scholarly activities, Professor Olivas directed the Institute for Higher Education Law and Governance at the University of Houston Law Center, which promotes research on the law of higher education.[86] Moreover, he put his higher education expertise into active service, including as general counsel of the American Association of University Professors[87] and president of the Association of American Law Schools.[88] He also was an active member of the American Law Institute (ALI), which brings together prominent lawyers, legal scholars, and jurists to prepare law reform proposals.[89] Characteristic of his career, Professor Olivas worked to add Latina/o members to the ALI.[90] In all of these roles, he vigorously pursued diversity, equity, and inclusion long before it became fashionable.

D. Social Justice Lawyering

A lawyer at heart, Professor Olivas was deeply committed to the use of the rule of law as a tool for social change. In that same vein, he wrote on the professional responsibilities of lawyers pursuing civil rights.[91] In his professional activities, Professor Olivas also advocated for civil rights. For example, he helped draft an amicus curiae brief to the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of more than 120 immigration law scholars in the case challenging President Donald Trump’s attempt to dismantle the DACA policy, which provides relief from removal and work authorization to undocumented immigrants who came to the United States as children.[92] Besides participating in drafting the brief, Professor Olivas recruited immigration law professors to sign on as amici, which undoubtedly increased the number who joined.[93] He also produced scholarship analyzing DACA.[94] A conservative Court by a 5-4 vote rejected the Trump administration’s attempt to rescind DACA.[95]

In addition, Professor Olivas for many years served on the board of directors of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF), one of the premier Latina/o civil rights organizations in the United States.[96] Taking pride in MALDEF’s cutting-edge advocacy, he spread the word of its achievements.[97] Recognizing his civil rights contributions, MALDEF released a statement mourning Professor Olivas’s passing.[98]

In short, besides advocating for civil rights in his scholarship, Professor Olivas actively sought to vindicate those rights through professional service. By doing so, he demonstrated a commitment to the fundamental tenet of critical race theory and critical Latina/o theory that scholars should be social justice activists.[99] As Professor Jennifer Chacón aptly put it, Professor Olivas was a “Lawyer, Scholar, and Lawyer’s Scholar.”[100]

IV. Conclusion

The analysis of Hernandez v. Texas in “Colored Men” and “Hombres Aquí” exemplifies Professor Michael Olivas’s commitment to Latina/o civil rights and his deep appreciation of the use of the law for social justice ends. His advocacy for civil rights neatly ties together Professor Olivas’s career of scholarship, teaching, and professional service. However, he meant much more to me and countless others. Professor Olivas’s influence lives on in the many lives that he touched and people that he championed.

  1. See, e.g., Edwin Flores & Nicole Acevedo, Latino Legal Scholar Remembered for Advancing Equity in Education, Law, NBC News (Apr. 30, 2022, 2:47 PM), https://www.aol.com/news/latino-legal-scholar-remembered-advancing-110702976.html [https://perma.cc/RB4P-YANH]; Olivia P. Tallet, ‘A Giant and Legend’: UH Community Mourns the Loss of Professor Emeritus Michael Olivas, Hous. Chron., https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Scores-of-people-mourn-the-loss-of-a-University-of-17126210.php [https://perma.cc/36P9-RA39] (last updated Apr. 27, 2022, 9:19 PM); University of Houston Law Center Mourns Passing of Professor Emeritus Michael A. Olivas, Univ. of Hous. L. Ctr. (Apr. 22, 2022), https://www.law.uh.edu/news/spring2022/0422Olivas.asp [https://perma.cc/94V5-2R42].

  2. Law Professor and Accidental Historian: The Scholarship of Michael A. Olivas (Ediberto Román ed., 2017) [hereinafter Law Professor and Accidental Historian].

  3. See Denise K. Magner, 3 Law Schools May Escape “Dirty Dozen” List, Chron. Higher Educ. (June 30, 1993), https://www.chronicle.com/article/3-law-schools-may-escape-dirty-dozen-list/ [https://perma.cc/MNB9-SRKA] (reporting that the 1992–1993 Dirty Dozen list included Harvard, Yale, and Columbia law schools, which all hoped to avoid inclusion on the subsequent list).

  4. See Alfredo García, Walking the Walk for the Latina Professoriate, in Law Professor and Accidental Historian, supra note 2, at 245, 245; Ediberto Romˊan & Christopher B. Carbot, Freeriders and Diversity in the Legal Academy: A New Dirty Dozen List?, 83 Ind. L.J. 1235, 1238 (2008).

  5. See Flores & Acevedo, supra note 1.

  6. See Kevin R. Johnson & George A. Martínez, Crossover Dreams: The Roots of LatCrit Theory in Chicana/o Studies Activism and Scholarship, 53 U. Mia. L. Rev. 1143, 1151 (1999).

  7. See Latinx Law Faculty (2020) (on file with author).

  8. See Michael A. Olivas, The Education of Latino Lawyers: An Essay on Crop Cultivation, 14 Chicano-Latino L. Rev. 117, 134–38 (1994). For analysis of this influential article and its legacy, see Maria Pabón Lopez & John Trasviña, Latino and Latina Lawyers in the United States: What Has Happened to Our Crops?, in Law Professor and Accidental Historian, supra note 2, at 225, 225.

  9. See Flores & Acevedo, supra note 1; Johnson & Martínez, supra note 6, at 1151.

  10. Self-conscious over my mixed ancestry, I greatly appreciated that Professor Olivas added me to the Latina/o law professors list upon my hiring at U.C. Davis in 1989. I later was honored when he asked that I take over preparation and distribution of the list, which I performed for several years before passing the baton to another professor.

  11. See About the Annual Meeting, Ass’n of Am. L. Schs., https://am.aals.org/about/ [https://perma.cc/2L2U-DY8L] (last visited Mar. 23, 2024).

  12. The Latina/o law professor’s dinner at California Western School of Law during the 2023 AALS annual meeting in San Diego apparently was the first one that Professor Olivas missed. As she has for years, Dr. Tina Reyes, Professor Olivas’s wife, attended the dinner, at which many colleagues shared memories of Professor Olivas. We again talked about his legacy at the dinner at the 2024 annual meeting in Washington, D.C.

  13. Rachel F. Moran, The Diversity Activist Michael Olivas: On Being a Trailblazer Instead of an Eagle Scout, in Law Professor and Accidental Historian, supra note 2, at 219, 219.

  14. Marc-Tizoc González, La Gran Lucha: Michael A. Olivas, Breaking the Law on Principle, and Confronting the Risks of Representation, in Law Professor and Accidental Historian, supra note 2, at 37, 37–38. Although never a law school dean, Professor Olivas in 2016–2017 served with distinction as the interim president of the University of Houston-Downtown campus. See Message from President Loren J. Blanchard: Remembering Dr. Michael A. Olivas, Univ. of Hous.-Downtown (Apr. 22, 2022), https://news.uhd.edu/message-from-president-loren-j-blanchard-remembering-dr-michael-a-olivas/ [https://perma.cc/73UA-4JCX].

  15. “Colored Men” and “Hombres Aquí”: Hernandez v. Texas and the Emergence of Mexican-American Lawyering (Michael A. Olivas ed., 2006) [hereinafter “Colored Men” and “Hombres Aquí”].

  16. Reflecting Professor Olivas’s love of movies, he devoted a day each holiday season to rewatching the trilogy of Godfather films. See The Godfather Trilogy: 1901–1980, IMDb, https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0150742/ [https://perma.cc/KP22-9LTN] (last visited Mar. 23, 2024). Similarly, a passion for rock and roll inspired him to create and host a syndicated radio show discussing legal issues in the rock music industry. See The Law of Rock and Roll, npr, https://www.kanw.com/show/the-law-of-rock-and-roll [https://perma.cc/Z3YE-RAPY] (last visited Mar. 23, 2024).

  17. Christopher David Ruiz Cameron, Michael Olivas and the Ownership of Mexican-American Legal Scholarship, in Law Professor and Accidental Historian, supra note 2, at 29, 33; see Hernandez v. Texas, 347 U.S. 475 (1954).

  18. Hernandez, 347 U.S. at 477, 482; see U.S. Const. amend. XIV § 1.

  19. See generally Law Professor and Accidental Historian, supra note 2 (collecting chapters analyzing Professor Olivas’s research on Latina/o civil rights history).

  20. Compare Hernandez, 347 U.S. at 475 (holding unconstitutional criminal conviction because Mexican Americans had been excluded from the jury pool), with Brown v. Bd. of Educ., 347 U.S. 483, 495 (1954) (holding that the segregation of public schools on the basis of race violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment).

  21. See Ian Haney López, Race, Ethnicity, Erasure: The Salience of Race to LatCrit Theory, 85 Calif. L. Rev. 1143, 1159, 1169 (1997) (reviewing court decisions holding that Mexican Americans were white for purposes of the Equal Protection Clause).

  22. See generally George A. Martinez, Legal Indeterminacy, Judicial Discretion and the Mexican-American Litigation Experience: 1930-1980, 27 U.C. Davis L. Rev. 555 (1994) (analyzing the history of Mexican-American civil rights litigation from 1930–1980).

  23. See generally San Antonio Indep. Sch. Dist. v. Rodriguez, 411 U.S. 1 (1973) (rejecting a constitutional challenge brought by Mexican American parents to the school financing system in Texas that resulted in unequal educational opportunities for their children); Westminster Sch. Dist. v. Mendez, 161 F.2d 774 (9th Cir. 1947) (holding unlawful the segregation of Mexican American students in a California public school district). See generally Marisela Martinez-Cola, The Bricks Before Brown: The Chinese American, Native American, and Mexican Americans’ Struggle for Educational Equality (2022) (recounting the resistance of non-Black groups to segregation and other educational inequalities before Brown v. Board of Education).

  24. Cruz Reynoso, From Struggle, Hope, 92 Calif. L. Rev. 1249, 1255–56 (2004) (footnotes omitted) (reviewing Carey McWilliams, North from Mexico (1949)). See generally Philippa Strum, Mendez v. Westminster: School Desegregation and Mexican-American Rights (2010) (reviewing the history of Westminster School District v. Mendez).

  25. See Michael A. Olivas, Commemorating the 50th Anniversary of Hernandez v. Texas, 25 Chicano-Latino L. Rev. 1, 5, 7–8 (2005).

  26. See id. at 1; see also Chicanx-Latinx Law Review, UCLA L., https://law.ucla.edu/academics/journals/chicanx-latinx-law-review [https://perma.cc/N9EN-Z5RR] (last visited Mar. 23, 2024) (law review website).

  27. See “Colored Men” and “Hombres Aquí,” supra note 15.

  28. See generally Juan F. Perea, The Black/White Binary Paradigm of Race: The “Normal Science” of American Racial Thought, 85 Calif. L. Rev. 1213, 1219–20 (1997) (analyzing how the Black/white paradigm of civil rights renders invisible Latina/o civil rights issues); Richard Delgado, Rodrigo’s Fifteenth Chronicle: Racial Mixture, Latino-Critical Scholarship, and the Black-White Binary, 75 Tex. L. Rev. 1181 (1997) (reviewing Louise Ann Fisch, All Rise: Reynaldo G. Garza the First Mexican American Federal Judge (1996) (to a similar effect). For a pathbreaking casebook, now in its fourth edition, presenting civil rights law through a multiracial lens, see Juan F. Perea et al., Race and Races: Cases and Resources for a Diverse America (4th ed. 2023).

  29. Laura M. Padilla, The Black–White Paradigm’s Continuing Erasure of Latinas: See Women Law Deans of Color, 99 Denv. L. Rev. 683, 684 (2022). Both immigration law, see infra Section III.B., and language regulation, see, for example, Christopher David Ruiz Cameron, How the García Cousins Lost Their Accents: Understanding the Language of Title VII Decisions Approving English-Only Rules as the Product of Racial Dualism, Latino Invisibility, and Legal Indeterminacy, 85 Calif. L. Rev. 1347, 1353–54 (1997), implicate Latina/o civil rights concerns ignored as a result of the operation of the Black/white paradigm.

  30. Rachel F. Moran, Neither Black nor White, 2 Harv. Latino L. Rev. 61, 68–69 (1997).

  31. Michael A. Olivas, The “Trial of the Century” that Never Was: Staff Sgt. Macario Garcia, the Congressional Medal of Honor, and the Oasis Café, 83 Ind. L.J. 1391, 1391 (2008) (footnote omitted). See generally Neil Foley, The White Scourge: Mexicans, Blacks, and Poor Whites in Texas Cotton Culture (1997) (analyzing the complex history of racial and class subordination in Texas); Monica Muñoz Martinez, The Injustice Never Leaves You: Anti-Mexican Violence in Texas (2018) (documenting the history of violence against persons of Mexican ancestry in Texas). Actions of the Texas government continue to raise civil rights concerns. See, e.g., Valerie Gonzalez & Paul J. Weber, Gov. Abbott Signs Bill that Lets Police Arrest Migrants Who Enter the US Illegally, NBCDFW, https://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/texas-news/gov-abbott-signs-bill-that-lets-police-arrest-migrants-who-enter-the-us-illegally/3414606/ [https://perma.cc/RU5N-2FQV] (last updated Dec. 19, 2023, 1:43 PM) (reporting on the Texas law signed by the Governor in 2023 that would criminalize unlawful entry into the United States and authorize state law enforcement officers to enforce the immigration laws); Jean Lantz Reisz, Federal Government Is Challenging Texas’s Buoys in the Rio Grande–Here’s Why These Kinds of Border Blockades Wind Up Complicating Immigration Enforcement, Conversation (July 27, 2023, 8:26 AM), https://theconversation.com/federal-government-is-challenging-texass-buoys-in-the-rio-grande-heres-why-these-kinds-of-border-blockades-wind-up-complicating-immigration-enforcement-210517 [https://perma.cc/85DR-SBU5] (assessing critically Texas governor’s placement of buoys with razor wire in the Rio Grande as an immigration enforcement measure).

  32. Laura E. Gómez, Off-White in an Age of White Supremacy: Mexican Elites and the Rights of Indians and Blacks in Nineteenth-Century New Mexico, in “Colored Men” and “Hombres Aquí,” supra note 15, at 1, 1.

  33. Kevin R. Johnson, Hernandez v. Texas: Legacies of Justice and Injustice, in “Colored Men” and “Hombres Aquí,” supra note 15, at 53, 72 (emphasis added) (footnotes omitted).

  34. Hernandez v. Texas, 347 U.S. 475, 476 (1954); Brown v. Bd. of Educ., 347 U.S. 483 (1954).

  35. See Hernandez, 347 U.S. at 477, 482.

  36. Id. at 479–80 (emphasis added).

  37. Id. at 482. Previously the Attorney General and Governor of California, Chief Justice Warren had lived through episodes of discrimination and violence directed at Mexican Americans in the state. See Johnson, supra note 33, at 58–66.

  38. Juan Francisco Perea, Mi Profundo Azul: Why Latinos Have a Right to Sing the Blues, in “Colored Men” and “Hombres Aquí,” supra note 15, at 91, 91 (emphasis added).

  39. See Hernandez, 347 U.S. at 482.

  40. The Supreme Court announced the discriminatory intent requirement more than twenty years after deciding Hernandez v. Texas. See, e.g., Vill. of Arlington Heights v. Metro. Dev. Hous. Corp., 429 U.S. 252, 265 (1977); Washington v. Davis, 426 U.S. 229, 240–42 (1976). Critics contend that the intent requirement places an undue evidentiary burden on victims of discrimination. See, e.g., Barbara J. Flagg, “Was Blind but Now I See”: White Race Consciousness and the Requirement of Discriminatory Intent, 91 Mich. L. Rev. 953, 961–69, 994–95 (1993); Charles R. Lawrence III, The Id, the Ego, and Equal Protection: Reckoning with Unconscious Racism, 39 Stan. L. Rev. 317, 369–77 (1987).

  41. See, e.g., Hernandez v. New York, 500 U.S. 352, 355, 361, 370 (1991) (ruling that a prosecutor lawfully used peremptory challenges to strike bilingual jurors despite the fact that multiple strikes removed Latina/os from a jury in the criminal prosecution of a Latino defendant); Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79, 82–83, 89, 100 (1986) (holding that it is unconstitutional to strike potential jurors solely on the basis of their race).

  42. See Michael A. Olivas, Hernandez v. Texas: A Litigation History, in “Colored Men” and “Hombres Aquí,” supra note 15, at 209, 221–22, 222 n.68. After the Supreme Court reversed Pete Hernandez’s conviction, the state retried him, and another jury convicted Hernandez of murder. See id. at 219.

  43. See Johnson, supra note 33, at 76–89 (analyzing the contemporary underrepresentation of Latina/os on juries).

  44. Ian Haney López & Michael A. Olivas, Jim Crow, Mexican Americans, and the Anti-Subordination Constitution: The Story of Hernandez v. Texas, in Race Law Stories 273, 273–74 (Rachel F. Moran & Devon W. Carbado eds., 2008) (emphasis added) (footnotes omitted); see Brian Soucek, The Return of Noncongruent Equal Protection, 83 Fordham L. Rev. 155, 194 & n.248 (2014) (acknowledging that the Supreme Court in Hernandez v. Texas understood that “the list of suspect classes [subjecting a law or practice to strict judicial scrutiny] might vary not only between levels of government, but also from state to state, or even city to city”).

  45. Michael A. Olivas, Introduction to “Colored Men” and “Hombres Aquí,” supra note 15, at xxi–xxii.

  46. See, e.g., Richard Kluger, Simple Justice: The History of Brown v. Board of Education and Black America’s Struggle for Equality 347 (rev. ed. 2004).

  47. Gómez, supra note 32, at 1. With a format resembling that of “Colored Men” and “Hombres Aquí,” see supra note 15, Professor Olivas edited an anthology of readings documenting a prominent attorney’s advocacy for Mexican American civil rights. See In Defense of My People: Alonso S. Perales and the Development of Mexican-American Public Intellectuals (Michael A. Olivas ed., 2012) (discussed in Gloria Valencia-Weber, In Defense of My People: Alonso S. Perales, the Rule of Law and the Development of Mexican-American Intellectuals, in Law Professor and Accidental Historian, supra note 2, at 77, 77).

  48. See Michael A. Olivas, Hernandez v. Texas: A Litigation History, in “Colored Men” and “Hombres Aquí,” supra note 15, at 209, 220–21. Professor Olivas uncovered evidence undermining the allegation that one of Pete Hernandez’s attorneys was “drunk the night before” oral arguments in the Supreme Court in Hernandez v. Texas. See Ruiz Cameron, supra note 17, at 33.

  49. See “Colored Men” and “Hombres Aquí,” supra note 15, at vii–viii (listing chapters by Mark Tushnet, Laura E. Gómez, Ian Haney López, Kevin R. Johnson, Juan Perea, Neil Foley, Steven Harmon Wilson, Claire Sheridan, and Sandra Guerra Thompson).

  50. See id.; Ian Haney López, Race and Colorblindness After Hernandez and Brown, in “Colored Men” and “Hombres Aquí,” supra note 15, at 41, 50–51; Johnson, supra note 33, at 53, 75–77, 82.

  51. See James de Anda, Hernandez at Fifty, a Personal History, in “Colored Men” and “Hombres Aquí,” supra note 15, at 199, 199; see also Rosanna Ruiz, Houston Judge Had Major Role in Ruling on Hispanic Rights, Hous. Chron. (Sept. 8, 2006) https://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/Houston-judge-had-major-role-in-ruling-on-1632159.php [https://perma.cc/8PPQ-H8CM] (describing in an obituary de Anda’s role in the Hernandez case).

  52. See de Anda, supra note 51, at 199, 202.

  53. See id. at 200.

  54. See Olivas, supra note 45, at xxi; see also Hernandez v. Texas, 347 U.S. 475, 476 (1954); see also Hernandez v. Texas, Bullock Tex. State Hist. Museum, https://www.thestoryoftexas.com/discover/artifacts/hernandez-v-texas-spotlight-050115 [https://perma.cc/WCF2-VJPP] (last visited Mar. 4, 2024); Directions from Jackson Cnty. Courthouse to the Univ. of Hous. L. Ctr., Google Maps, http://maps.google.com [https://perma.cc/J62G-CTMN] (follow “Directions” hyperlink; then search starting point field for “Jackson County Courthouse,” and search destination field for “University of Houston Law Center”).

  55. See Olivas, supra note 45, at xiii (emphasis added).

  56. See Olivas, supra note 25, at 1; About the Book, Arte Público Press, https://artepublicopress.com/product/colored-men-and-hombres-aqui-hernandez-v-texas-and-the-emergence-of-mexican-american-lawyering-2/ [https://perma.cc/P22E-RLSW] (last visited Feb. 10, 2024); About Us, Arte Público Press, https://artepublicopress.com/about/ [https://perma.cc/MYF2-NLAS] (last visited Feb. 10, 2024).

  57. See “Colored Men” and “Hombres Aquí,” supra note 15; About the Book, supra note 56; see About Us, supra note 56.

  58. See “Colored Men” and “Hombres Aquí,” supra note 15, apps. at 223–373.

  59. See, e.g., Tom I. Romero, II, The Color of Local Government: Observations of a Brown Buffalo on Racial Impact Statements in the Movement for Water Justice, 25 CUNY L. Rev. 241, 262 n.90 (2022); Jennifer Gordon & R.A. Lenhardt, Rethinking Work and Citizenship, 55 UCLA L. Rev. 1161, 1210 n.239 (2008); see also “Colored Men” and “Hombres Aquí,” supra note 15, at xxii.

  60. See Tallet, supra note 1.

  61. See MALDEF Statement on the Passing of Professor Michael Olivas, MALDEF (Apr. 22, 2022), https://www.maldef.org/2022/04/maldef-statement-on-the-passing-of-professor-michael-olivas/ [https://perma.cc/V6LV-CST8].

  62. Kevin Johnson et al., Transcript: The Civil Rights Legacy of Justice Cruz Reynoso, 26 U.C. Davis Soc. Just. L. Rev. 132, 136–37, 154 (2022). For a summary of Justice Reynoso’s civil rights achievements over his career, see Kevin R. Johnson & Amagda Pérez, Cruz Reynoso’s Fight for Justice, 39 Chicanx-Latinx L. Rev. 39, 43, 46–48, 54–55, 57–59.

  63. See Kevin R. Johnson, Introduction: Michael A. Olivas and the Study of Latina/os and the Law, in Law Professor and Accidental Historian, supra note 2, at xvii, xvii–xviii (characterizing Professor Olivas as an “accidental historian” of Latina/o civil rights); see, e.g., Olivas, supra note 31, at 1392–93, 1397 (analyzing the controversy over a Texas restaurant’s refusal to serve a decorated World War II veteran of Mexican ancestry).

  64. See supra Part II (discussing Hernandez v. Texas).

  65. Not until 1985 was the first U.S. immigration law casebook published. See Kevin R. Johnson, Teaching Racial and Social Justice in the Immigration Law Survey Course, 67 St. Louis U. L.J. 473, 475 (2023) (referring to T. Alexander Aleinikoff & David A. Martin, Immigration: Process and Policy (1st ed. 1985)). Today, many are on the market.

  66. See, e.g., Michael A. Olivas, Immigration-Related State and Local Ordinances: Preemption, Prejudice, and the Proper Role for Enforcement, U. Chi. Legal F., 2007, at 27 (discussed in George A. Martínez, Olivas on State and Local Immigration-Related Statutes and Ordinances, in Law Professor and Accidental Historian, supra note 2, at 147, 147–48, 155); Michael A. Olivas, The Chronicles, My Grandfather’s Stories, and Immigration Law: The Slave Traders Chronicle as Racial History, 34 St. Louis U. L.J. 425, 425 (1990) (analyzed in Steven W. Bender, The Chronicles of Immigration Law, in Law Professor and Accidental Historian, supra note 2, at 3, 7–8, 10–11, 13–14). Professor Olivas undoubtedly would have been critical of Texas’s current immigration enforcement measures. See supra note 31 (citing authorities).

  67. See supra text accompanying notes 3–14.

  68. Michael A. Olivas, Immigration Law Teaching and Scholarship in the Ivory Tower: A Response to Race Matters, 2000 U. Ill. L. Rev. 613, 613–14 (2000) (agreeing with Professor Kevin R. Johnson’s assessment of the state of immigration law scholarship).

  69. Professor Olivas’s recognition of the importance of race to immigration law and policy influenced my scholarship. See, e.g., Kevin R. Johnson, Systemic Racism in the U.S. Immigration Laws, 97 Ind. L.J. 1455, 1472 (2022).

  70. See Tallet, supra note 1; Andrew Becker, Immigration Timeline, Frontline World, https://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/mexico704/history/timeline.html [https://perma.cc/9GML-BPUP] (last visited Feb. 11, 2024); Drishti Pillai & Samantha Artiga, Health and Health Care in the U.S.-Mexico Border Region, KFF (Nov. 21, 2022) https://www.kff.org/racial-equity-and-health-policy/issue-brief/health-and-health-care-in-the-u-s-mexico-border-region/# [https://perma.cc/J77V-2FZX].

  71. See infra text accompanying notes 72–75.

  72. See, e.g., Michael A. Olivas, Unaccompanied Refugee Children: Detention, Due Process, and Disgrace, 2 Stan. L. & Pol’y Rev. 159, 160 (1990). Professor Olivas’s critical analysis of immigrant detention came years before a wave of scholarly criticism of its use. See, e.g., César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández, Migrating to Prison: America’s Obsession with Locking Up Immigrants 153–54 (2019).

  73. Plyler v. Doe, 457 U.S. 202, 230 (1982).

  74. See, e.g., Michael A. Olivas, No Undocumented Child Left Behind: Plyer v. Doe and the Education of Undocumented Schoolchildren (2012) (analyzed in Gabriel J. Chin, Plyler v. Doe, Olivas v. Kobach, in Law Professor and Accidental Historian, supra note 2, at 113, 116). With a conservative Supreme Court, Plyler v. Doe’s future is uncertain. See Rachel F. Moran, Personhood, Property, and Public Education: The Case of Plyler v. Doe, 123 Colum. L. Rev. 1271, 1287, 1305 n.250 (2023).

  75. See, e.g., Michael A. Olivas, Perchance to DREAM: A Legal and Political History of the DREAM Act and DACA 9, 24, 27 (2020); Michael A. Olivas, Dreams Deferred: Deferred Action, Prosecutorial Discretion, and the Vexing Case(s) of DREAM Act Students, 21 Wm. & Mary Bill Rts. J. 463, 463–64, 537, 542 (2012) (analyzed in Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia, What Happens to a Dream Deferred?, in Law Professor and Accidental Historian, supra note 2, at 129, 131–132).

  76. See supra Part II (discussing Hernandez v. Texas).

  77. See id.

  78. Elizabeth M. Iglesias, Commentary, Out of the Shadow: Marking Intersections in and Between Asian Pacific American Critical Legal Scholarship and Latina/o Critical Legal Theory, 40 B.C. L. Rev. 349, 359, 361 (1998) (footnote omitted).

  79. See supra text accompanying notes 3–14.

  80. I attended the first immigration law teachers conference, which Professor Olivas organized, in Albuquerque, New Mexico in 1992. The next conference is in 2024. See 2024 National Immigration Law Professors Conference, Univ. of Minn., https://law.umn.edu/events/2024-national-immigration-law-professors-conference [https://perma.cc/Q2KJ-AZFH] (last visited Feb. 11, 2024).

  81. See Flores & Acevedo, supra note 1; Kevin R. Johnson, Michael A. Olivas, & Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia, The Meaning of DACA, ImmigrationProf Blog (June 1, 2020) https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2020/06/the-meaning-of-daca-by-kevin-r-johnson-michael-a-olivas-and-shoba-sivaprasad-wadhia-.html# [https://perma.cc/3UNU-ZT97].

  82. See, e.g., Michael A. Olivas & Amy Gajda, The Law and Higher Education: Cases and Materials on Colleges in Court 594–95, 861 (4th ed. 2016); Education Law Stories 1 (Michael A. Olivas & Ronna Greff Schneider eds., 2008); Michael A. Olivas, Reflections on Professorial Academic Freedom: Second Thoughts on the Third “Essential Freedom,” 45 Stan. L. Rev. 1835, 1857–58 (1993) (discussed in Leticia M. Diaz, Professor Michael A. Olivas’ Reflections on Professorial Academic Freedom: Second Thoughts on the Third “Essential Freedom,” in Law Professor and Accidental Historian, supra note 2, at 187, 187).

  83. See Olivas, supra note 72, at 5.

  84. See, e.g., Michael A. Olivas, IIRIRA, the DREAM Act, and Undocumented College Student Residency, 30 J. Coll. & U.L. 435, 461–62 (2004) (discussed in Elena Maria Marty-Nelson, The Olivas Guide: Navigating Through the Morass of In-State Residency Requirements for Higher Education, in Law Professor and Accidental Historian, supra note 2, at 195, 197); see also Jennifer M. Chacón, Toward Justice: Michael A. Olivas, IIRIRA, The DREAM Act and Undocumented College Student Residency, in Law Professor and Accidental Historian, supra note 2, at 101, 101–02 (reviewing Professor Olivas’s scholarship in this area).

  85. See supra Part II.

  86. See Tallet, supra note 1; see also Institute for Higher Education Law and Governance, Univ. of Hous. L. Ctr., https://www.law.uh.edu/ihelg/ [https://perma.cc/X64Z-CWK8] (last visited Feb. 10, 2024).

  87. See Michael Olivas Dies at 71, Am. Ass’n of Univ. Professors (Apr. 25, 2022), https://www.aaup.org/news/michael-olivas-dies-71 [https://perma.cc/959S-A4WX].

  88. See Remembering Former AALS President Michael A. Olivas, Ass’n of Am. L. Schs., https://www.aals.org/about/publications/newsletters/aals-news-spring-2022/remembering-former-aals-president-michael-a-olivas/ [https://perma.cc/5L9E-N9JK] (last visited Apr. 11, 2024).

  89. See In Memoriam: Michael Olivas, Am. L. Inst. (Apr. 25, 2022), https://www.ali.org/news/articles/memoriam-michael-olivas/ [https://perma.cc/K9UR-DAAC].

  90. See id.

  91. See Michael A. Olivas, Who Gets to Control Civil Rights Case Management?: An Essay on Purposive Organizations and Litigation Agenda-Building, 2015 Mich. St. L. Rev. 1617, 1650–52 (2015); Michael A. Olivas, Review Essay–The Arc of Triumph and the Agony of Defeat: Mexican Americans and the Law, 60 J. Legal Educ. 354, 367 (2010); Michael A. Olivas, “Breaking the Law” on Principle: An Essay on Lawyers’ Dilemmas, Unpopular Causes, and Legal Regimes, 52 U. Pitt. L. Rev. 815, 819–20, 857 (1991) (discussed in González, supra note 14, at 38).

  92. See Brief of Immigration Law Scholars as Amici Curiae in Support of the Respondents, Dep’t of Homeland Sec. v. Regents of Univ. of Cal., 140 S. Ct. 1891 (2020), https://immigrantjustice.org/system/files/legal-resource-files/2024.03.28_-_historian_amicus.pdf [https://perma.cc/B787-K858].

  93. See id.

  94. See Olivas, supra note 75, at 86–87; Johnson, Olivas & Wadhia, supra note 81.

  95. See Dep’t of Homeland Sec., 140 S. Ct. at 1898–99.

  96. See MALDEF Statement on the Passing of Professor Michael Olivas, supra note 61.

  97. See, e.g., Michael A. Olivas, From a “Legal Organization of Militants” into a “Law Firm for the Latino Community”: MALDEF and the Purposive Cases of Keyes, Rodriguez, and Plyler, 90 Denv. L. Rev. 1151, 1153, 1207 (2013); see also Solangel Maldonado, MALDEF’s Champion, in Law Professor and Accidental Historian, supra note 2, at 253, 253–55 (discussing Professor Olivas’s extensive work with MALDEF).

  98. See MALDEF Statement on the Passing of Professor Michael Olivas, supra note 61.

  99. See Tanya Katerí Hernández, Michael Olivas, the Critical Race Theory Lat-Crit Activist Scholar, in Law Professor and Accidental Historian, supra note 2, at 237, 243–44.

  100. Chacón, supra note 84, at 103.