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Villazor, Rose Cuison

Assistant Professor of Law

Tel: 214-768-3486
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Email: rvillazo@smu.edu
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Bio

Professor Villazor’s scholarship focuses on indigenous peoples’ property rights, the intersection between property and immigration, citizenship, post-colonial theory and international human rights law. Her articles will appear or have appeared in the California Law Review, Northwestern University Law Review, N.Y.U. Journal of Legislation and Public Policy and U.C.L.A. Asian Pacific American Law Journal. She is also a chapter contributor to AWAKENING FROM THE DREAM: CIVIL RIGHTS UNDER SIEGE AND THE NEW STRUGGLE FOR EQUAL JUSTICE (Denise Morgan, et. al. 2006).

Professor Villazor’s current research project examines laws and regulations that protect indigenous peoples’ property interests and their impact on the rights of non-indigenous peoples. She is also working on a research project that examines the validity of local ordinances that restrict the ability of landlords to rent property to undocumented immigrants.

Prior to joining the SMU law faculty, Professor Villazor completed a human rights fellowship at Columbia University Law School. As a Human Rights Fellow, Professor Villazor worked with Columbia University Law School’s Human Rights Institute in examining the domestic application of various human rights treaties. While at Columbia, she drafted a shadow report on U.S. compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights on behalf of the National Campaign to Restore Civil Rights (NCRCR), which was submitted to the U.N. Human Rights Committee in July 2006.

Professor Villazor received an LL.M. from Columbia University Law School, a J.D., cum laude, from the American University Washington College of Law, and a B.A. from the University of Texas at Austin. While in law school, she was an editor for the American University Law Review. She served as a law clerk for Associate Judge Stephen H. Glickman of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals. After her clerkship, Professor Villazor was awarded an Equal Justice Fellowship to work for New York Lawyers for the Public Interest (NYLPI). At NYLPI, she litigated cases in federal and state courts and administrative agencies on behalf of immigrants with limited English proficiency, people with disabilities and racial minorities.

Primary Articles

Blood Quantum and Equal Protection (forthcoming California Law Review 2008).

What is a Sanctuary, 61 SMU L. Rev. 133 (2008).

‘Testing the Model Minority Myth’: A Case of Weak Empiricism, 101 Nw. U. L. Rev. Colloquy 101 (2007).

Community Lawyering: An Approach to Addressing Inequalities in Access to Health Care for Poor, Of Color, and Immigrant Communities, 8 N.Y.U. J. LEGIS. & PUB. POL’Y 35 (2005).

Comment, The Construction of Labor Abuse in the Mariana Islands as Anti-American, 6 UCLA Asian Pac. Am. L. J. (2000).

Books
Language Rights and Loss of Judicial Remedy: The Impact of Alexander v. Sandoval on Language Minorities in AWAKENING FROM THE DREAM: CIVIL RIGHTS UNDER SIEGE AND THE NEW STRUGGLE FOR EQUAL JUSTICE (Denise Morgan, Rachel Godsil & Joy Moses, eds., 2006).

Speeches/Presentations

“Sanctuary Cities and the Conferral of Local Citizenship,” Annual Immigration Law Teachers Workshop, May 2-4, 2008, University of Miami Law School.

“Local Anti-Immigrant Housing Ordinances: At the Intersection of Property, Race and Citizenship,” Joint Conference of the Western Law Teachers of Color (WLTC) and Conference of Asian Pacific American Law Faculty (CAPALF), April 24-26, 2008, University of Denver Sturm College of Law.

“Local Anti-Immigrant Housing Ordinances: At the Intersection of Property, Race and Citizenship,” Colloquium on Law & Citizenship, April 23, 2008, SMU Dedman School of Law.

“Birthright Citizenship in the U.S. Territories,” Association for the Study of Law, Culture and Humanities Annual Conference,” March 27-28, 2008, University of California at Berkeley.

“Indigenous-Only Land Ownership Laws in the Pacific: A Comparative Analysis,” Association for the Study of Law, Culture, and Humanities Annual Conference,” March 27-28, 2008, University of California at Berkeley.

“Immigration Law and the Separation of Families,” AALS Annual Meeting, Section on Women in Legal Education, January 3, 2008, New York, New York.

“Immigration Law and the Separation of Families,” SMU Symposium on Immigration and Civil Rights, October 19, 2007, SMU Dedman School of Law, Dallas, Texas.

“Birthright Citizenship in the U.S. Territories,” LatCrit XII, October 4-7, 2007, Florida International University School of Law, Miami, Florida.

“Indigenous-Only Land Ownership Laws in the U.S., France and Fiji: A Comparative Analysis,” Annual Meeting of the Law and Society Association, Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany, July 19, 2007.

“Indigenous-Only Land Ownership Laws in the U.S., France and Fiji: A Comparative Analysis,” Property, Citizenship and Social Entrepreneurship, University of Durham, Durham, England, July 14, 2007.

“Property, Personhood and Undocumented Immigrants,” Association for the Study of Law, Culture and Humanities, March 23-24, 2007, Georgetown Law Center.

“Blood Quantum Property Laws: Racial Discrimination or Acts of Self-Determination?,” LatCrit XI, October 5-8, 2006, William S. Boyd School of Law, University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

Other

The Lack of Access to the Courts to Enforce Civil Rights in the United States: A Violation of the Right to Effective Remedy Under Article 2(3) of the ICCPR (with Cynthia Soohoo, Columbia Law School Human Rights Institute), Shadow Report submitted to the United Nations Human Rights Committee (July 2006)

Farmer’s Branch Ordinance and Illegal Immigration, Interview, Think on KERA 90.1, Nov. 28, 2006.

Curriculum Vitae

Education

B.A., 1996, UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS
J.D., 2000, AMERICAN UNIVERSITY
LL.M., 2006, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

Office phone: (214) 768-3486