Degrees

J.D., University of Pennsylvania School of Law, 1989; B.A., Princeton University, 1985

Short Bio

Dean María Pabón López is an expert in immigrants’ rights (including the education of immigrant children), immigration law and diversity/multicultural matters in the legal profession, focusing on issues concerning Latinos, race and the law, and the status of women lawyers. She has also published articles on Spain’s immigration law, as well as the impact of immigrant nurses on the nursing shortage in the U.S. She has done research in the areas of family law and inheritance law as it pertains to those who are not U.S. citizens.

A prolific author, Dean López has placed articles in journals such as the Harvard Latino Law Review, the Georgetown Immigration Law Journal, the Hastings Women’s Law Journal and the Seton Hall Law Journal. Her latest book is Persistent Inequality: Contemporary Realities in The Education of Undocumented Latino/a Children (with Gerardo R. López), published by Routledge: Taylor and Francis Group in late 2009. Her current research projects is examination of hate crimes against immigrants in the U.S. 

Dean López currently serves on the Diversity Committee of the Louisiana State Bar Association.  She has served on the Indiana State Board of Law Examinersfrom 2008 to 2011, having been named to the board by Indiana Supreme Court Chief Justice Randall T. Shepard. She was also an appointed member of the Indiana Supreme Court's Court Interpreter Certification Advisory Board, a project of the Race and Gender Fairness Commission. She is an inaugural member of the Latino Affairs Committee of the Indiana State Bar. In addition, she serves on the editorial boards of Bender’s Immigration Bulletin and the Computer Assisted Legal Instruction (“CALI”) center. She has been a contributing editor to the Jotwell and Nuestras Voces Latinas blogs.

Dean López is the recipient of the 2011 Sigueme Award from the IUPUI Latino Students Association; of the 2008 Diversity Attorney in Practice Award from the Indiana Lawyer and the 2007 Rabb Emison Diversity Award from the Indiana State Bar Association. Professor López received the 2006 Trustees Teaching Award from Indiana University. She was named a Dean's Fellow in recognition of scholarly excellence at the Indiana University School of Law, Indianapolis. She was the recipient of a Special Recognition Award from the Chair of the Second National People of Color Legal Scholarship Conference held at the George Washington University School of Law in October of 2004. The law school's Hispanic Law Society (HLS) gave Professor López their 2004 Award "in recognition of her commitment to her students and loyal support of the HLS." She has also received awards from the Hispanic Bar Association of Pennsylvania, the Travis County Texas Women Lawyers Association (for contributions to the minority community) and from the University of Missouri Columbia School of Law, where she was a recipient of Faculty Performance Shares.

For the year 2010-11 Dean López was appointed to the Editorial Advisory Committee of the National Conference of Bar Examiners. The Editorial Advisory Committee reviews and comments on articles for publication in The Bar Examiner, which is published quarterly, and is the only national publication related to bar admissions. For 2011-2012, she will serve on the Diversity Committee of the National Conference of Bar Examineers.  Also in 2010, she was elected to the American Law Institute (ALI), one of the highest honors in the legal profession.