Kittrie receives University of Michigan Law School Latino Alumni Award

Professor Orde Félix Kittrie is being honored by the Latino Law Students Association of the University of Michigan Law School with the 2012 J.T. Canales Award. It honors one “alumnus who has made a significant contribution to empowering the Latino community” each year.

The award was presented to Kittrie on March 16 at the Latino Law Students Association’s annual banquet at the Michigan League in Ann Arbor, Mich.

A Mexican-American, Kittrie writes, teaches and speaks frequently on legal issues relating to the U.S.-Mexico border and is active in the Latino community. He has spoken on issues at the intersection of crime and immigration at the annual meetings of both the Association of American Law Schools and the American Bar Association. He is the author of the article titled, “Federalism, Deportation and Crime Victims Afraid to Call the Police,” which analyzes the federal versus local struggle over deportation's deterrent effect on crime reporting by unauthorized immigrants. In the article, which has been cited in several dozen other scholarly articles, Kittrie describes how unscrupulous employers, common criminals, battering spouses, corrupt government officials, border vigilantes and others exploit unauthorized immigrant fear of calling the police.

Kittrie is a former president of Hispanic National Bar Association (HNBA) Region XIV, representing Arizona and Nevada on the HNBA Board of Governors and overseeing HNBA activities in those states. He also served for several years as a member of the board of directors of Los Abogados, the Hispanic Bar Association of Arizona. He was honored by the Chicano Faculty Staff Association of ASU with the Dr. Manuel Servin Faculty Award for 2006.  Kittrie was also named by Hispanic Outlook on Higher Education magazine as one of the U.S.’s four most notable Hispanic professors of international law. In addition, he was named 2006-2007 Centennial Professor of the Year at ASU.

Earlier in his career, while at the U.S. Department of State, he served for several years on the board of directors of the Hispanic Bar Association of D.C.  While attending the University of Michigan Law School, from which he graduated in 1992, he served as secretary of the organization now known as the Latino Law Students Association.