Emerita Professor of Law
Senior Adviser to Executive Vice President for UNM Health Sciences Center
A.B. 1972, San Diego State University
J.D. 1978, Harvard Law School
Member of the Massachusetts, New Mexico and New York Bars
Margaret Montoya was born in Las Vegas, New Mexico to Ricardo and Virginia Montoya. She traces her ancestry to families who have been in New Mexico since it was controlled by Spain in the early 19th Century and by México until 1848.
She attended Immaculate Conception School in Las Vegas, for elementary school, and when her family moved to Albuquerque, she attended and graduated from Highland High School. After many second chances, she graduated in 1972 with her bachelor’s degree from San Diego State University.
Upon deciding to go to law school, she was the first Latina to be accepted to Harvard Law School. When she graduated with her law degree in 1978, she won the prestigious Harvard University’s Sheldon Traveling Fellowship (also won by Justice Antonin Scalia), which allowed her to travel through Europe and Asia, studying affirmative action in Malaysia and India.
Montoya has been a member of the UNM law school faculty since 1992 and has taught courses in constitutional rights, torts, contracts, clinical law and employment law, and in her seminars, she examines issues of race, ethnicity, gender, culture and language.
From 2003-2005, she was interim director of the Southwest Hispanic Research Institute, which was established in 1980 to serve as UNM’s interdisciplinary center for the study of the Hispanic experience in the Southwest.
Montoya has been working to create P-20 pipeline partnerships with the New Mexico Hispanic Bar Association, the public schools, the judiciary, nonprofits and policymakers. In 2003, a group of law students under her supervision filed an amicus brief in Grutter v. Bollinger, anaffirmative action case decided by the U.S. Supreme Court. Her work on pipeline and other health disparity issues led to her assignment as the senior adviser to the executive vice president at the UNM Health Sciences Center. She holds a secondary appointment in the center’s Department of Community and Family Health. She has been a member of the UNM School of Medicine’s admission committee for its Combined BA/MD Degree program.
Montoya’s scholarship appears in law reviews, anthologies and casebooks and is used in many high school, undergraduate, graduate and law school courses throughout the United States. Her best-known article, Mascaras, Trenzas y Greñas: Un/Masking the Self While Un/Braiding Latina Stories and Legal Discourse, connects autobiographical narratives with legal analysis and focuses on resisting the cultural assimilation that often comes with higher education.
She was the lead scholar of a comprehensive American Bar Association initiative that analyzed a broad set of information aimed at advancing racial/ethnic, gender, disability and sexual orientation diversity within the legal profession. The result of the two-year effort, “Diversity in the Legal Profession: Next Steps”, a 68-page report, was released in April 2010.
From 2004-2009, Montoya was a regular commentator on The Line, a weekly PBS television show that analyzes current events in New Mexico. She has been featured on Democracy Now, a public radio show, in connection with her portrayal of the prosecutor in a mock trial sponsored by the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee from Sept. 24-26, 2005 in Washington, D.C. Click here for video and pictures of the mock trial of the prosecution of major Bush administration figures, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and former CIA Director George Tenet, “indicted” for aiding and abetting torture around the world.
Montoya has been recognized by her professional peers and by the Latina/o community for her work. In 2009, the CUNY School of Law named her the Haywood Burns Chair in Civil Rights. She is the recipient of the prestigious Clyde Ferguson Award, given annually by law professors of color for accomplishments in scholarship, teaching and service. Both the National Latina/o Law Students Association and UNM’s Graduate and Professional Students of Color awarded her Lifetime Achievement Awards. The New Mexico Hispano Round Table, a coalition of some 60 Hispano/Latino organizations, gave her itsWalk the Talk award. She was named by Hispanic Business Magazine to its list of Elite Latinas and also received the Kate Stoneman Award from Albany Law School for expanding opportunities for women.
She is featured in the books, Mujeres Valorosas, written by the New Mexico Hispanic Women’s Council, and Pioneering Women Lawyers, edited by Patricia E. Salkin, for the ABA Commission on Women in the Profession.
Montoya has been married to UNM Mathematics Professor Charles Boyer for 30 years. They have two daughters, Diana and Alejandra, and a stepson, Charles.
In an industrial society characterized by a "free enterprise" system and notions of individual freedom, "contract" is one of the primary means by which private individuals order their affairs. The contracts course inquires into why promises are enforced as contracts, which promises are enforced, and how they are enforced. The course places emphasis on close and critical analyses of court decisions.
NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement, created a trading zone that includes the U.S., Mexico and Canada. One of the most controversial aspects of free trade policies has been the movement of work towards those nations that fail to regulate the employment practices of employers, particularly multinational corporations. The economic and legal interdependence fostered by these agreements has led to increasing interest in the legal systems of Canada and Mexico who share long borders and intertwined histories with the United States.
This course examines the employment and labor histories, contemporary policies and current controversies within and among these three North American neighbors. While the course does not focus on NAFTA, certain topics consider the effects of free trade policies, such as the maquila (assembly plants) along the U.S. - Mexico border.
This course involves an in-depth inquiry into the building blocks of civil rights law; freedom of expression (speech and press), equal protection, due process, and religious freedom. There will be discussion of litigation strategy and the decision-making processes of the U.S. Supreme Court.
This course will weave together material from traditional courses on gender and the law with readings from critical race feminism. The general themes of the course will examine identity, the body and self, the family and work. The course will include issues from a domestic as well as from international perspectives.
The course seeks to explore these questions? How has the Law created categories that support discrimination and subordination based on gender and sexuality? Where is Law when we seek to understand gender? Where is gender when we seek to understand Law? How do the identity categories (gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality, class, etc.) interact and intersect to create opportunities for consciousness, voice & silence, emancipation and powerlessness? How does Law affect how we understand gendered family relations and structure work opportunities for gendered workers?
This course will examine federal statutory law as it applies to discrimination in the workplace. We will focus on Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and its amendments; the Age Discrimination in Employment Act; and civil rights statutes from the post-Civil War Reconstruction era, including 42 U.S.C. § 1981. The course will explore the substantive meanings of “discrimination” under these acts, the models of proof for establishing a claim, the theoretical underpinnings of the statutes, and some of the procedural and remedial issues relevant to employment discrimination law.
This course will analyze state and federal statutes and common law relied upon in the typical practice of employment law, including the at-will employment doctrine and its exceptions, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the American with Disabilities Act, the Family and Medical Leave Act, the Equal Pay Act, Wage and Hour law, Unemployment Compensation, Workers Compensation, the New Mexico Human Rights Act, etc. In addition the inquiry into the relevant law, the class will incorporate exercises in the practical aspects of litigation in this field, from both the employee and employer perspective.
This course is designed to provide students with a working knowledge of Dispute Resolution (DR) theory and practice. The course will focus on the basic components of the dispute resolution spectrum: negotiation, mediation, arbitration and hybrid processes. Within these components, the course will examine the legal, ethical, and policy issues that arise from the various DR applications. A theme throughout the semester will be the appropriate selection of DR forums and representation of clients in DR.
This course begins with an analysis of the concept of “Race.” Small groups will prepare presentations on each of the major racial groups in the US: African Americans, American Indians, Latinas/os, Asian Americans and Whites. The remainder of the course will be determined by the participants who will choose from the following topics: Evolving notions of equality; voting and participatory democracy; residential segregation and education; freedom of expression; sexuality and the family; popular culture; crime and responses to racism. In addition to class presentations, students will also do a service learning project involving race, law and the local community. Students will register for this as a three credit course although the class will only meet for two hours per week. One hour will be independent study pertaining to the community project.
Lawyers are often called upon to speak through the public media about issues that affect their clients and/or the general public. Lawyers also try to control the public relations aspects of disputes, business deals and/or the perceptions of client behavior. Legal academicians appear on radio and TV as "public intellectuals."
There are legal and ethical rules as well as communication skills involved in appearing in the public media. Moreover, as blogs, email, and electronic social networks become more available as communication methods, lawyers must be aware of their implications for clients and for their business potential for the business of law. This seminar will look at how lawyers use media and how the law regulates lawyers' use of radio and television as well as blogs, email and other new forms of communication technology. This course will use judicial opinions and secondary materials and visit radio and television studios. Local public relations and media experts will join us as speakers.
One-hour Practicum Course accompanying the Torts, Contracts, and Criminal Law Courses
The Practicum Course is not really a separate course; rather, it is a hands-on, practice-based extension of the Torts, Contracts, and Criminal Law courses. Students explore the theoretical connections among the three courses in the context of resolving simulated but realistic client problems. The course stresses practical and analytical skills through writing exercises while also exploring substantive law questions that are addressed in other first semester courses.
This course begins with an analysis of the concept of "race." Students will work in small groups to prepare presentations on each of the major racial groups in the US: African Americans, American Indians, Latinas/os, Asian Americans and Whites. The course will also examine some or all of the following topics: Developing notions of equality; voting and participatory democracy; residential segregation and education; freedom of expression; sexuality and the family; popular culture; crime and responses to racism. In addition to class presentations, students will also do a project involving race, the Law and the Albuquerque community.
Are you interested in learning more about new forms of jurisprudence such as LatCrit (a term that covers a broad range of scholarship focused on anti-subordination values, doctrines and practices produced mostly in law schools by a highly diverse group of legal scholars), Critical Race Theory, Feminism and/or Border Studies? In writing for publication? In a cross-disciplinary, cyber-spaced experiment? In service learning projects (which means, in this instance, that you learn by partnering with public school and undergraduate teachers and students in developing race-conscious and critical curricular projects)?
If any or all of these opportunities interest you, you may want to consider this seminar. As the instructor, I will be creating linkages between students here at the law school and professors in other academic units or law schools who have students interested in working on critical theory and praxis. The students will work individually and collectively in the research, writing and service learning aspects of the course. Students will be evaluated on the following: 1) preparing an analysis and literature review on one of the topics listed below; 2) producing a curricular project developing ideas and multimodal materials (Web-based, DVDs, etc.) on how students and teachers can use this scholarship; and 3) working with a team of students on a service project that creates a partnership with students and teachers to discuss, demonstrate and experiment with this scholarship.
Using my published and unpublished scholarship (described below), we will work on creating and publishing a critical theory book targeted at high school and undergraduate students. Together we will learn how to design, edit, publish, and market a book on critical theory. Proceeds from this publication will be used to fund other social justice ventures.
My scholarship covers the following topics, among others:
•LatCrit: Counter-hegemonic structures of knowledge production and cultural capital,
•LatCrit theory as a tool for resisting coercive cultural and ideological assimilation
•Affirmative action and equal protection in education,
•Educational segregation and pipeline programs,
•Bush v. Gore and the role of the courts in a democracy,
•The expression of protected identities (racial, ethnic, gendered, sexual, religious, etc) via un/masking, passing, covering and other forms of “performance,”
•Narrative intelligence: The voice of color and silence in legal writing, including judicial opinions,
•Color-on-color conflict and color-with-color coalitions and coexistence: reading New Mexico’s stories and listening to her peoples,
•Cultural literacy/competence and the delivery of legal/medical services,
•The protection of “outsider” art forms in the face of religious or political repression,
•Wills and other intergenerational devices for preserving culturally valuable family and community wealth,
•The use of identity-conscious popular culture, such as movies, advertising, poetry, to communicate about law and public policy, and
•De-constructing the dynamics of the law school classroom using critical race pedagogy.
The objectives of this class are:
1) to create a collaborative learning environment where students can engage race-based jurisprudence and critical theory to produce sophisticated written legal analyses,
2) develop materials about race, law and public policy of interest to high school and undergraduate students, and
3) work with professionals in other disciplines to use race-based scholarship to address the pressing issue of low educational outcomes for students of color.
The over-arching goal of service learning projects like this one is to transform legal education, however gradually, by moving, lowering and perforating the boundaries of the law school classroom, finding new audiences for progressive legal scholarship, using student talent and labor to address educational inequalities, and training law students for leadership in social change by honing their analytical, team-building, and communication skills.
Torts is an introduction to the system governing civil liability for wrongs. Unlike contract law, in which persons establish standards governing their relations in private agreements, tort law imposes rights and duties between persons even when the parties have not done so by contract. Unlike criminal law which the government (rather than the victim) imposes societal standards through the medium litigation seeking punishment for violation of criminal law, tort litigation is controlled by the injured person who seeks not punishment, but personal compensation via money damages from the person whose violation of the laws of torts cause harm to the victim. Course coverage focuses on the tort of Negligence. As time permits, other torts are analyzed.
Tribal Law Journal I-S, Fall, II-S, Spring, III-S, Fall, IV-S, Spring
Students enrolled in the Law of Indigenous Peoples class will be invited to join the Tribal Law Journal staff for the fall and spring semesters of their second and third years. The journal is an exclusively on-line journal devoted to advancing indigenous self-determination through promoting scholarship and discussion on internal indigenous law. Students will meet throughout the year to learn, not only correct Bluebook citation styles, but also how to cite sources of traditional law. Students will be given the opportunity to edit and source check scholarly papers submitted to the journal, including substantive and technical editing, as well as opportunities to promote the mission of the journal in the community and submit their own written work for publication. The journal provides students the opportunity to learn more about indigenous law and to contribute their voice to the discussion relating to the internal law of the world’s indigenous people.
Tribal Law Journal Editor III-E, Fall, IV-E, Spring
The editor(s) of the Tribal Law Journal will work with the Editor-in-Chief in soliciting and selecting for publication articles submitted to the journal on internal indigenous law. Student editors will work collaboratively with authors to create a final product that reflects the mission of the journal, and at the same time, maintains the integrity of the authors’ work. The editor(s) will also be responsible for teaching and supervising the editing work of the journal staff and the final overall substantive and technical editing of student and professional pieces submitted for publication. Students will have the opportunity to assist the Editor-in-Chief in promoting the journal and its mission, at a local as well as at an international level. This course also includes a web-editing component for students interested in using technology to increase access to the issues critical to the self-determination of indigenous people.
Diversity in the Legal Profession: The Next Steps, ABA Presidential Commission on Diversity Report and Recommendations, April 2010, Lead Scholar (with Prof. Tucker Culbertson and Marc-Tizoc González).
Narrative Braids: Performing Racial Literacy (with Prof. Christine Zuni Cruz and Mr. Gene Grant) 33 Amer. Ind. L. J. 153 (2008) and published concurrently in 1 Freedom Ctr J. 60 (2009).
"Latinas/os" and Latina/o Legal Studies: A Critical and Self-Critical Review of LatCrit Theory and Legal Models of Knowledge Production (with Francisco Valdes) 4 Fla. Int’l L. J. (2009).
Uniéndo Comunidades by Learning Lessons and Mobilizing for Change, 27 Chicana/o-Latina/o L. Rev. 1 (2008).
Latinas/os and the Politics of Knowledge Production: LatCrit Scholarship and Academic Activism as Social Justice Action (with Francisco Valdes) 83 Indiana L. Rev. 1197 (2008).
Defending the Future Voices of Critical Race Feminism, 39 U.C. Davis L. Rev. 1305 (2006).
Antigona: A Voice Rebuking Power, 75 UMKC L. Rev. 1171 (2007).
LatCrit at Ten Years, 26 Chicano-Latino L. Rev. 1 (2006).
Affirmative Action after Grutter, Seattle Journal of Social Justice, (forthcoming 2004).
Why the U. of Michigan Flap Matters to UNM (with Samantha Adams and Julie Sakura) Albuquerque Trib., 4/09/03, p. C-1.
Un/Braiding Stories about Law, Sexuality and Morality, 24 UCLA Chicano / Latino L. Rev. 1 (2002).
Seeking Educational Self-Determination: Raza Studies for Revolution (with Marcos Pizarro) in Equity and Excellence in Education, Dolores Delgado Bernal and Claudia Ramirez Wiedeman, Eds. (2002).
The Future of Civil Rights: A Dialogue, Focus on Law Studies, Vol. XVII, No. 2 (Spring 2002).
Celebrating Racialized Narratives in Crossroads, Trajectories and A New Critical Race Theory (Frank Valdes, Angela Harris and Jerome Culp, eds., 2002).
A Brief History of Chicana/o School Segregation: One Rationale for Affirmative Action, 12 Berk. La Raza L. J. 159 (2002).
FOREWORD: Class in LatCrit: Theory and Praxis in a World of Economic Inequality, 78 Univ. of Denver L. Rev. 467 (2001).
How the Supreme Court Has Shaken Our Faith, Albuquerque Trib., Apr. 6, 2001, at D1.
Silence and Silencing: Their Centripetal and Centrifugal Forces in Legal Communication, Pedagogy and Discourse, 33 MICH. J. L. REFORM 263 (2000) and 5 MICH. J. RACE & L. 847 ( 2000).
Mapping LatCrit's Intellectual and Ideological Foundations and Its Future Trajectories, 53 U. Miami L. Rev. 1119 (1999).
Religious Rituals and LatCrit Theorizing, 19 Chicano-Latino L. Rev. 417 (1998).
Border/ed Identities: Narrative and the Social Construction of Personal and Collective Identities, in Crossing Boundaries: Traditions and Transformations in Law and Society Research 129 (Austin Sarat et al. eds., 1998), featured in The Latino/a Condition: Law, History, Narratives (an anthology) (Richard Delgado & Jean Stefancic eds., 1998).
Voicing Differences, 4 Clinical L. Rev. 147 (1997).
Lines of Demarcation in a Town Called Frontera: A Review of John Sayles' 'Lone Star', 27 N.M. L. Rev. 223 (1997).
On "Subtle Prejudices," White Supremacy and Affirmative Action: A Reply to Paul Butler, 68 U. Colo. L. Rev. 891 (1997), included in Race and Races: Cases and Resources for a Multiracial America (Juan Perea, Angela Harris, Richard Delgado, & Stephanie Wildman eds., 1999).
Academic Mestizaje: Re/Producing Clinical Teaching and Re/Framing Wills as Latina Praxis, 2 Harv. Latino L. Rev. 349 (1997).
Border Crossings in an Age of Border Patrols: Cruzando Fronteras Metaforicas, 26 N.M. L. Rev. 1 (1996), featured in The Latino/a Condition: Law, History, Narratives (an anthology) (Richard Delgado & Jean Stefancic eds., 1998).
Voices/Voces in the Borderlands: A Colloquy on Re/Constructing Identities in Re/Constructed Legal Spaces, 6 Colum. J. Gender & L. 387 (1996) (co-authored with Melissa Harrison), featured in The Latino/a Condition: Law, History, Narratives (an anthology) (Richard Delgado & Jean Stefancic eds., 1998).
Mascaras, Trenzas, y Grenas: Un/Masking the Self While Un/Braiding Latina Stories and Legal Discourse, 17 Harv. Women's L.J. 185 (1994) and 15 Chicano-Latino L. Rev. 1 (1994).
Guadalupe in New Mexico in Religion as Art, Steve Loza, ed.(New Mexico Univ. Press, 2009).
Involving Minors in Research: Law and Ethics within Multicultural Settings (book chapter with Dr. Luis Vargas) in Handbook of Social Research Ethics, Donna M. Mertens and Pauline Ginsberg, Eds. (2008).
Critical Race Theory: The Cutting Edge (Richard Delgado ed., 1995) (2d ed. 2000).
Speaking Chicana (Letticia Galindo & Maria Dolores Gonzales eds., 1999).
The Latino/a Condition: Law, History, Narratives (an anthology) (Richard Delgado & Jean Stefancic eds., 1998).
Critical Race Feminism (Adrien Wing ed., 1997).
Beyond Portia: Women, Law and Literature in the United States (Jacqueline St. Joan & Annette Bennington McElhiney eds., 1997).
Race and Races: Cases and Resources for a Multiracial America (Juan Perea, Angela Harris, Richard Delgado, & Stephanie Wildman eds., 1999).
Gender and Law: Theory, Doctrine, Commentary (Angela Harris & Katharine Bartlett, 1997).
Law and Language(s): Image, Integration, and Innovation, 7 La Raza L.J. 1 (1994), featured in The Latino/a Condition: Law, History, Narratives (an anthology) (Richard Delgado & Jean Stefancic eds., 1998).
Book’s Insights on Race Lost in Reviewer’s Fog, (Op/Ed book review of Laura Gomez’s Manifest Destinies: The Making of the Mexican American Race) The Sunday Journal, December 16, 2007 at B3.
Book Review, 5 SOC. LEGAL STUD. 435 (1996) (reviewing Carl Gutierrez-Jones, RETHINKING THE BORDERLANDS: Between Chicano Culture and Legal Discourse (1995)), featured in The Latino/a Condition: Law, History, Narratives (an anthology) (Richard Delgado & Jean Stefancic eds., 1998).
UNM School of Law
1117 Stanford NE MSC11 6070, 1 University of New Mexico
Albuquerque, NM 87131-0001
© The University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM 87131, (505) 277-0111
New Mexico's Flagship University