Prof. Michael A. Olivas Named Recipient of 2018 AALS Triennial Award for Lifetime Service to Legal Education and to the Legal Profession

AALS - "Michael A. Olivas is known around the Southwest as “the Rock and Roll Law Professor”—a moniker he’s happy to maintain as a lifelong connoisseur of popular music and media. Professor Olivas hosts a weekly radio show on KANW in Albuquerque, NM, that gives five-minute lessons on the law and its relationship to music and entertainment.

Around the legal academy, however, Olivas is a giant. In immigration law and the law of higher education, in scholarship and in service, through the lives of the innumerable faculty members he’s mentored and at every level of AALS leadership, his reputation precedes him.

AALS is proud to announce that Olivas is the recipient of the 2018 AALS Triennial Award for Lifetime Service to Legal Education and to the Legal Profession, an award which Executive Committee member Erwin Chemerinsky (Dean, University of California, Berkeley School of Law) describes as “a law professor’s Hall of Fame.”

“Michael Olivas richly deserves this honor,” says Chemerinsky. “He has done so much to improve legal education, whether formally with his service as AALS President or informally in his efforts to enhance diversity in the legal academy.”

“He has made a huge difference in many law schools and in many law professors’ careers.” "