Office of External Communications

Houston, TX 77204-5017 Fax: 713.743.8199

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
December 5, 2006

Contact: Marisa Ramirez
713.743.8152 (office)
713.204.9798 (cell)
mrcannon@uh.edu

HOUSTON, Dec. 5, 2006 — The Decoration of the Order of the Aztec Eagle, Mexico's highest award given to a foreign national, has been bestowed upon University of Houston Law Professor Stephen T. Zamora. The award recognizes Zamora’s dedication to scholarship and teaching that promotes U.S. and Mexican understanding.

“It’s very gratifying to receive this recognition for doing something that I love to do—working with Mexican and U.S. lawyers, judges and law students to increase our understanding of each other’s legal system,” said Zamora, the Leonard B. Rosenberg Professor of Law at the UH Law Center. “In my research and writings, I try to take a critical look at Mexican law and society, but I hope that I do so with a sense of appreciation of the complexity and value of the whole, rather than a criticism of some particular element of Mexican society that I find wanting because it does not conform to U.S. models.”

Zamora received the award at a ceremony held in Mexico City recently. In presenting Zamora with the medal, Foreign Minister Luis Ernesto Derbez cited Zamora’s efforts to promote increased understanding in the United States about Mexican law and society, as well as increased understanding in Mexico about U.S. law and society. Zamora has directed the UH Law Center’s Mexican Legal Studies Program, and has actively promoted student and faculty exchanges with Mexican law schools. Zamora also launched a scholarship program that brings Mexican lawyers to UH for graduate classes, and he is a founding director of the North American Consortium on Legal Education (NACLE) to strengthen links between U.S., Mexico and Canadian law schools. He has also published extensively on Mexican law and U.S. – Mexican relations, and is the lead author of the leading English-language treatise on Mexican law.

“The destinies of both the United States and Mexico are linked not only by geography, but also by increasingly common elements of culture,” Zamora said. “Still, the legal systems, politics and social practices of Mexico and the United States are sufficiently different that misunderstandings often arise and may translate into unproductive policy choices by private as well as public actors.”

Past recipients of the Aztec Eagle award include former Texas Governor Ann Richards, U.S. Senator Christopher Dodd, Cesar Chavez, and Bill and Melinda Gates, in addition to numerous ambassadors and heads of state.

For more information on NACLE, please visit www.nacle.org.

For more information on the UH Law Center’s Mexican Legal Studies Program, please visit http://www.law.uh.edu/nacle/exchange.html.

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