Since 2001, St. Mary's University School of Law has successfully coordinated and hosted its Minority Pre-Law Student Symposium. The symposium was initially funded through a generous grant from the Law School Admission Council. The symposium involves the participation of all nine Texas law schools, the Texas Young Lawyers Association and the Upward Bound program. The symposium is for minority high school and college students interested in pursuing a legal education. Students spend a Saturday on the St. Mary's campus learning about the law school application process, admissions, financial aid, student life and career options. Students also participate in an interactive mock law school class/exercise conducted by St. Mary's law professors. The first 100 interested students may elect to attend the pre-sympoisum Chicano Civil Rights Banquet on Thursday night before the symposium. The symposium ensures opportunities for participants to interact with minority attorneys, judges, the law school faculty, law school students, admissions officers and others. Recent attendance has been between 200-250 participants; seating is extremely limited and pre-registration is required.

Program

The next Symposium is scheduled for March 24, 2012.

Generally, the symposium kicks off with a noon luncheon for all participants.
The keynote address is delivered by a prominent and successful minority attorney licensed in the State of Texas. The 2012 Keymore Speaker will be Andre Hampton, Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs and Professor of Law at St. Mary's University.

Other past keynote addresses have been delivered by the following:

• Judge Peter Sakai, 225th District Court in San Antonio, Texas
• Bill Jones, General Counsel to Texas Governor Rick Perry
• Jose Roberto Juarez, Dean of the University of Denver School of Law, and only one of three Hispanic law school deans in the country
• Mr. Gary Bledsoe, President and General Counsel of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) of Texas
• Councilman Art Hall, San Antonio City Council, first African American elected to the San Antonio City Council from District 8
• Mr. Eduardo Rodriguez, then-President of the State Bar of Texas, and only the second Hispanic to serve in that position
• Ms. Nina Perales, Regional Counsel for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund's San Antonio office, and one of the very few Latinas ever to argue a case before the United States Supreme Court
• Charles E. Cantú, Dean of the St. Mary's University School of Law, and the most senior Hispanic law professor in the country.
• Sylvia A. Cardona, President of the Texas Young Lawyers Association

Law Fair and College Fair

Each year, admissions representatives from all nine Texas law schools are invited to attend the Law Fair:

• St. Mary's University School of Law
• Baylor Law School
• South Texas College of Law
• Southern Methodist University Dedman School of Law
• Texas Tech University School of Law
• Texas Wesleyan University School of Law
• Texas Southern University Thurgood Marshall School of Law
• University of Houston Law Center
• University of Texas School of Law

Kaplan and Princeton Review Raffles

Kaplan and Princeton Review have donated scholarships to cover the cost of LSAT preparation courses.

Chicano Civil Rights Banquet

The Chicano Civil Rights Series is spearhead by the Center for Latina/o Legal Studies to celebrate historic legal cases which furthered the civil rights of Chicanos and Chicanas in the United States. This year's banquet will be held on Friday, March 23, 2012.

Of the 200 seats available at the banquet, half are set aside for the first 100 student registrants from the Minority Pre-Law Student Symposium who indicate that they would like to attend the dinner. The other 100 seats are filled with academics, community and civil leaders, as well as elected officials, who mingle and network with the promising high school and college Symposium attendees. In past years, the breadth and depth of the community leaders has been quite impressive, including current members of the San Antonio City Council, members of the Texas House, various educators from throughout San Antonio's high schools, colleges and universities, and many members of the San Antonio civil right's struggles of the past. In short, the Chicano Civil Rights Banquet has been a quite successful and exciting part of the program.

In 2006, the first banquet in this series commemorated the Mendez v. Westminster case out of California - the Latino communities' equivalent of Brown v. Board - and the keynote address was delivered by Ms. Sylvia Mendez, one of the plaintiff children in the Mendez case. In 2007, the banquet commemorated the landmark San Antonio v. Rodriguez case, addressing the Texas system for funding public schools. In 2008, the banquet focused on the landmark White v. Regester case in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Hispanics were an identifiable class of citizens affected by unconstitutional redistricting procedures. In 2009, the banquet celebrated the landmark case, Regents of the University of California V. Bakke , which upheld the use of affirmative action in higher education.

The most recent banquet focused on the 2006 United States Supreme Court case of LULAC v. Perry. The banquet honoree was Nina Perales, the attorney who argued the case on behalf of LULAC at the United States Supreme Court. In LULAC v. Perry, the Supreme Court determined that the issue was the “constitutional and statutory challenges to a 2003 enactment of the Texas State Legislature that drew new district lines for the 32 seats Texas holds in the United States House of Representatives.” At its core, the case involved the Texas Legislature’s redrawing congressional district lines following the 2000 census, by moving 100,000 Latinos out of one congressional district and into another. With respect to this redistricting, the court declared,

In essence the State took away the Latinos' [voting] opportunity because Latinos were about to exercise it. This bears the mark of intentional discrimination that could give rise to an equal protection violation. Even if we accept the District Court's finding that the State's action was taken primarily for political, not racial, reasons, the redrawing of the district lines was damaging to the Latinos in District 23. The State not only made fruitless the Latinos' mobilization efforts but also acted against those Latinos who were becoming most politically active, dividing them with a district line through the middle of Laredo.
We do hold that the redrawing of lines in District 23 violates §2 of the Voting Rights Act. The judgment of the District Court is affirmed in part, reversed in part, and vacated in part, and the cases are remanded for further proceedings.
It is so ordered.

Registration

Register for the 2012 Symposium:

Minority Law Students Associations

Representatives of the Asian Pacific Islander Law Students Association, the Black Law Students Association and the Hispanic Law Students Association staff a table for each of their respective minority law student organizations throughout the Symposium. The table contains a variety of interesting materials, and organization members are available throughout the afternoon, including the Law Fair, for Symposium participants to answer questions and address concerns about being a minority law student.

Directions

From Downtown

• Take I-10 West to Culebra Exit.
• Go West on Culebra to 36th Street.
• Turn Right. The Entrance is on your Right.
• Enter and drive past the Stadium toward Law School Buildings.
• Park in Visitor Parking.

From the Airport

• Take Loop 410 West to I-10 East.
• Take I-10 East toward Downtown.
• Take Culebra Exit and go West (Right) to 36th Street.
• Turn Right. The Entrance is on your Right.
• Enter and drive past the Stadium toward Law School Buildings.
• Park in Visitor Parking.

Once you arrive at the Law School campus, please make your way to the Law Classroom building, which is building 25 on the map of the university campus.

Contact

For additional information, please contact:

Manuel Cardenas
Research Assistant to
Associate Dean Reynaldo Anaya Valencia
St. Mary's University School of Law
One Camino Santa Maria
San Antonio, Texas
(210) 431-8033
mcardenas@gmail.com

Guadalupe Valdez
Legal Secretary, Programs and Projects
St. Mary's University School of Law
(210) 431-6878
gvaldez@stmarytx.edu