UNM School of Law student selected as Peggy Browning Fellow

Rachel Swanteson-Franz, a rising 2L at the University of New Mexico School of Law, was named a 2024 Peggy Browning Fellow and will spend the summer working at the New Mexico Center on Law and Poverty.

The Peggy Browning Fund helps law students gain experience with workplace justice advocacy by providing fellows with stipends for 10 weeks of employment with labor-related mentor organizations. Swanteson-Franz is one of 117 law students from around the country selected from a pool of nearly 4,000 applicants for this year’s program.

The Peggy Browning Fund provides the following statement regarding its fellowship: “Labor needs lawyers and we are inspired by the passion and dedication this year’s Fellows bring to the movement. These Fellows are distinguished students who have not only excelled in law school but who have also demonstrated their commitment to workers’ rights through their previous educational, organizing, work, volunteer, and personal experiences.”

Swanteson-Franz spent four years working in the environmental field, both in research and advocacy, before choosing to attend law school. Working in the environmental justice space and learning more about the labor movement led her to see deep connections between these often-siloed issues. She cited the 2010 Deepwater Horizon incident, which killed 11 oil rig crew members and led to the largest marine oil spill in history, as an example of how better labor protections could have prevented this catastrophe.

Swanteson-Franz said: “If companies generally had to comply with much more rigorous worker safety standards, they couldn’t exploit the workers and thereby exploit the environment at the same time.”

In explaining her desire to apply for the fellowship, Swanteson-Franz also cited her interest in ensuring that labor rights are prioritized in the transition to renewable energy and that new jobs in the sector be well-paid, treat employees fairly, and have strong safety regulations.

Swanteson-Franz plans to pursue the Natural Resources and Environmental Law Certificate and will serve as the vice president of the Association of Public Interest Law at the School of Law next year.

Professor Maryam Ahranjani

• Serving the second year of a three-year appointment to the ABA Silver Gavel Awards Committee.
• Elected to serve a three-year term on the UNM Committee on Governance.

Dean Emeritus Robert Desiderio

• Published a supplement to Planning Tax-Exempt Organizations (LexisNexis 2024) and a supplement to Bender’s State Taxation: Principles and Practice (Robert Desiderio rewrite editor, LexisNexis 2024).

Professor Paul Figueroa

• Presented “How to Use Drawings to Teach Consumer Law” at the Teaching Consumer Law Conference organized by Berkeley’s Center for Consumer Law & Economic Justice.

Professor Laura Gómez

• Honored by the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) School of Law for her many years of distinguished service. The Critical Race Studies Program at UCLA has endowed a fellowship called the Laura E. Gómez Teaching Fellowship on Latinx People and the Law. The fellowship is a two-year, full-time academic fellowship starting in July 2024. 

Professor Ernesto Longa

• Interviewed by KUNM and quoted in Source NM about the student protests calling on UNM to divest from Israel. 

Professor Vinay Harpalani

• Presented on the panel “Responding to the Attack on DEI and Racial Justice Movements” at the “Racial Justice at the Crossroads: A Summit to Situate the Moment and Shape the Future” on April 19, 2024. This was part of the DePaul University College of Law Racial Justice Initiative.
• Presented “Peril of the Mind: Asian American Achievement and the Legal Challenges to Racial Diversity in Admissions” at the Northeastern University School of Law on April 17, 2024.
• Presented “Black Legal Futurism: When We Center African-American Interests” on the panel “What is Black Legal Futurism?” at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas School of Law on April 5, 2024.  
• Quoted in an article “Racism is anything but dead” published in the Daily Texan on April 25, 2024.

Associate Dean John Kang

• Published “First Amendment Fetishism,” in 2024 Utah Law Review 679 (2024) that is now available for download. 

Professor Joshua Kastenberg

• Participated in a podcast by KRQE about how a Supreme Court case on homelessness could affect New Mexico. 
• Quoted in “Texas National Guard Tests State Authority on U.S. Southern Border,” Christian Science Monitor, April 5, 2024.

Professor Jennifer Moore

• Interviewed by the Albuquerque Journal for a story concerning the protests relating to Gaza that took place at the Duck Pond at the University of New Mexico. 

Professor Nadine Padilla



• Presented “The Legacy of Uranium Mining on the Navajo Nation” to the University of Utah Medical School’s Tribal, Rural and Underserved Medical Education Program.
• Presented “Tribal Efforts to Protect Sacred Sites: An Update on the Oak Flat Issue” at the Annual Hitchcock-Kelly Indigenous Human Rights Conference: Indigenous Human Rights, Environmental Justice, and Place, hosted by the UNM Department of Native American Studies and the UNM Department of Anthropology.
• Quoted in “Navajo Uranium Mines’ Unknown Cancer Link Risks Slowing Cleanup,” Bloomberg Law, April 1, 2024.

Professor Vanessa Racehorse

• Presented on the panel “The Trust Relationship” at Cornell Law School’s Indigenous Law Summit on April 13, 2024.
• Presented on the panel “A Year After Dobbs: Women’s Health in Indian Country” at the 49th Annual Indian Law Conference (“FedBar”) at Sandia Resort and Casino on April 5, 2024.
• Presented “Reflections on the History and Future of Tribal Self-Governance” at the American Indian Law Review’s 50th Anniversary Symposium, hosted by the University of Oklahoma College of Law on March 8, 2024.

Professor Sonia Gipson Rankin



• Published “Automated Stategraft: Electronic Enforcement Technology and the Economic Predation of Black Communities” in 2024 Wisconsin Law Review 665 (2024) that is now available for download. The article was coauthored with Professor Melanie Moses and Professor Kathy L. Powers. 
• Published a comment (coauthored with M.E. Moses) in Nature Reviews Electrical Engineering (2024). 
• Named as an institutional representative on the National Academies Action Collaborative on Transforming the Trajectory of Women of Color in Tech.
• Presented on a panel on February 22, 2024 for the UNM Office of the Vice President for Research Zancada Graduate Fellows Program on networking strategies.
• Served as a BeSeries speaker on a University of Oregon Youtube and Instagram reel on February 27, 2024.
• Presented on March 27, 2024 “Decoding Justice: The Impact of Algorithms on Criminal Evidence and Ethics,” an Ethics CLE for the New Jersey Fourth Annual Forensic Science Summit for the Criminal Defense Bar co-hosted by the New Jersey Office of the Public Defender, the Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers of New Jersey, and the New Jersey Institute of Technology.
• Facilitated on March 27, 2024 a Q&A with filmmaker Shalini Kantayya, director of Netflix’s Coded Bias, for UNM Health Sciences Center Women’s History Month Celebration.
• Presented on March 27, 2024 a lecture for the American Indian Student Services Ambassador Program about preparing for law school and addressing microaggressions.
• Presented on April 5, 2024 at the National Symposium on Equitable AI – Elevate Equity: Reimagining AI’s Potential, hosted by Morgan State University’s Center for Equitable AI & Machine Learning Systems.
• Moderated on April 10, 2024 a discussion on Disqualification with Professor Maryam Ahranjani and Donald Sherman, the Executive Vice President and Chief Counsel of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics, in Washington, D.C.
• Presented on April 16, 2024 on the panel “The Implications of Artificial Intelligence on Prospective Research Endeavors” for the Graduate Research, Interdisciplinary Network, and Development Conference at Morgan State University.
• Presented on the panel “AI, Public Discourse, and Elections” with other UNM scholars on the impact of AI on political elections.

Professor Carol Suzuki

• Presented at a writing workshop hosted by Penn State Dickinson Law Antiracist Development Institute.
• Published “Normalizing Opportunities: Engaging in Anti-Racist Practices in the First Year by Promoting Law Journal Membership and Judicial Clerkships” as part of the Incorporating Antiracist Principles in Academic and Student Services, Academic Success, and the Bar Examination volume of the Antiracist Development Institute’s Building an Antiracist Law School, Legal Academy, and Legal Profession book series. 
• Presented “Guiding Your Future Health Care Through Advance Directives.” The presentation was sponsored by the College Women’s Association of Japan, an organization of multinational women in Tokyo that supports education and cultural exchange.

UNM Alumna Erlinda Johnson appointed Special Prosecutor in the Alec Baldwin Case

Erlinda Ocampo Johnson, University of New Mexico School of Law graduate (’95), has been appointed the special prosecutor in the Alec Baldwin case, which is currently scheduled for trial in July. She will be pursuing an involuntary manslaughter charge against Baldwin due to his fatal shooting on the film set of Rust. 

Born in Nicaragua, Johnson’s family sought asylum in Santa Fe, New Mexico during the Nicaraguan civil war. Johnson now works in personal injury, criminal defense, civil rights, and criminal immigration at her law office, Law Office of Erlinda Ocampo Johnson, LLC. Johnson also works on undercover and informant operation cases, drug interdiction cases, racketeering cases, and complex multi-defendant federal murder cases.  

Immediately after graduating from the School of Law, Johnson began working as an Assistant District Attorney in the Second Judicial District. There, she prosecuted crimes, including DUIs, assault and battery, violent crimes, and murder cases. She worked at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for six years before opening her own practice. She also has experience working as a federal prosecutor on drug enforcement and organized crime investigations.  

Johnson has been involved in the New Mexico Bar since 1995 and is a member of five other Bar Associations. Johnson is a member of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, and the New Mexico Criminal Defense Lawyers Association. She has also recently joined as an Alumni Board member for the School of Law. As a board member, she helps strengthen the relationship between the School of Law, its students, its alumni, and the state’s legal community.

U.S. Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland speaks at UNM Commencement and NALSA Graduation and Blanket Ceremony

U.S. Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland, who made history when she became the first Native American cabinet secretary in U.S. history, delivered the commencement address at the University of New Mexico School of Law’s Native American Law Student Association (NALSA) Graduation and Blanket Ceremony as well as at UNM’s spring commencement ceremony at the Pit.

Secretary Haaland received a Bachelor of Arts in English in 1994 at UNM and earned her Juris Doctor from the School of Law in 2006. She is a member of the Pueblo of Laguna and a 35th generation New Mexican. She ran for U.S. Congress in 2018 and won, making her one of the first two Native women to serve in Congress.

“A lot of people didn’t think that as a Native American woman, I’d win my primary much less the general election, but anything worth having is worth working hard for and my hard work proved a lot of people wrong. Yours will too,” Secretary Haaland told students at UNM’s commencement.

The Graduation and Blanket Ceremony honored Indigenous graduates and those involved in NALSA, the Tribal Law Journal (TLJ), the Pre-Law Summer Institute, the Southwest Indian Law Clinic (SILC) and the Law and Indigenous Peoples Program (LIPP). Graduates included: Alejandro Alvarado, NALSA, TLJ, SILC; Shaniya Decker, Séliš, Nakoda & Turtle Mountain Chippewa, PLSI, NALSA, TLJ, SILC, LIPP; Valerie DiBernardo, NALSA, TLJ, SILC; Lauren Earls, Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians, NALSA, TLJ, SILC, LIPP; Ricardo Guadarrama, NALSA, TLJ, SILC; Justin Lauriano, San Felipe Pueblo and Sandia Pueblo, PLSI, NALSA, TLJ; Xaveria Mayerhofer, NALSA, TLJ, SILC, LIPP; and Sage Wagner, Jemez Pueblo and Santo Domingo Pueblo, PLSI, NALSA.

UNM Law Alumni Services