Some teachers give you a subject. A few give you a bearing. Stephen Zamora gave me both.
He was the first dean of Hispanic origin in the history of the University of Houston Law Center, where he led from 1995 to 2000. Long before that, and long after, he was one of the country’s foremost scholars of Mexican and international law. He wrote the book on it, literally, co-authoring Mexican Law for Oxford, and he founded the Center for U.S. and Mexican Law so the two systems could learn from each other instead of talking past each other.
I had the good fortune to study under him in Mexico City. He moved between Spanish and English without a seam, and he treated a classroom in Mexico with the same seriousness he brought to a faculty in Houston. Mexico gave him the Order of the Aztec Eagle, its highest honor for a foreign national. His students got something quieter and just as lasting: the sense that the law is a form of respect you extend to other people.
He spent his later years of counsel at a major firm, still teaching, still building. Stephen Zamora died in 2016. What he taught me was not a rule. It was a way to stand in a room.
Stephen T. Zamora (1944 to 2016), dean of the University of Houston Law Center from 1995 to 2000, founding director of the Center for U.S. and Mexican Law, co-author of Mexican Law (Oxford University Press), and a recipient of the Order of the Aztec Eagle.
