Camacho and Magaña Join School of Law Faculty

The U of A School of Law welcomes Jorge Camacho and Alma Magaña as assistant professors, adding two accomplished scholars to its faculty.

"We are very pleased to welcome Professors Camacho and Magaña to the law school community. They bring impressive experience, deep expertise and a dynamic range of professional perspectives that will enrich our students’ educational experience while broadening our academic offerings,” said interim Dean Katheleen Guzman.

Jorge Camacho

Camacho joins the School of Law after serving as the policy director for The Justice Collaboratory at Yale Law School, which engages nationally recognized academics, researchers and social scientists to help build a more just and effective legal system. Prior to joining Yale Law School, he served as senior counsel for the New York City Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice and senior counsel for the New York City Law Department’s Legal Counsel Division. He started his legal career as an assistant district attorney for the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office in New York City.

He began his career in legal education as an adjunct professor of law at St. John’s University School of Law, where he taught Criminal Procedure: Investigation. At Yale, he also worked as a clinical lecturer and associate research scholar in law, where he directed the school’s Policing, Law and Policy Clinic, which afforded students the opportunity to develop and draft policy materials that advance policing and public safety. His teaching and research interests include criminal law, criminal procedure, and state and local government law.

Camacho’s work has been featured in publications such as the Local Solutions Support Center White Paper Series, the University of Memphis Law Review, and the Marquette Law Review (forthcoming), and he has quoted commentary in articles for multiple news organizations, including USA Today and Reuters and opinion editorials published in The Appeal and The Hill. Additionally, he has presented at the Academic Roundtable on Criminal Justice Statistics for the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and at various academic conferences nationally.

He earned his Bachelor of Arts in political science from Swarthmore College, where he was a Philip Evans Scholar and studied at Wadham College at Oxford University through the Sarah Lawrence College Program at Oxford. He earned his J.D. from Yale Law School. There, he served as a notes editor for the Yale Law Journal.

Alma Magaña

Magaña joins the School of Law after working as an assistant professor of law at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, where she taught evidence and criminal law. Prior to her appointment as assistant Professor, she was the Harold A. Stevens Visiting Assistant Professor at Cardozo.

Prior to teaching, Professor Magaña worked for The Legal Aid Society in New York City, for over 10 years, where she represented clients in parole revocation proceedings and in criminal court. She was also a criminal immigration attorney for over a year. During her final two years with Legal Aid, she was an inaugural member of its Decarceration Project where she served as counsel on petitions relating to bail and habeas corpus in State Supreme Court and the Appellate Division of New York.

At the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, she served on the academic standards committee, adjunct hiring committee and student awards committee. Her work has been featured in publications such as the UCLA Law Review, UC Davis Law Review, and the Boston University Law Review. In the future, she plans to publish an article titled Decentralizing the Public Defender, which is the final piece in her series about public defender discretion. Furthermore, she has given presentations at many schools and workshops, including the Culp Colloquium at Harvard Law School, CrimFest, Boston College Law School Junior Roundtable Workshop, GO LILA Workshop, University of Iowa College of Law, Temple University Beasley School of Law and Case Western Reserve University School of Law.

She earned her Bachelor of Arts in politics, Spanish and Latin American studies from Furman University and her J.D. from Penn State University Dickinson School of Law, where she was the Latinx Law Students Association (LLSA) president, a Miller Center Public Interest Advocate and participant in the Inmate Assistance Clinic. She was also a Cherie T. Millage Public Interest Law Fund Fellow.

About the School of Law: The law school offers a competitive J.D. and is home to the nation's first LL.M. program in agriculture and food law. Led by nationally recognized faculty, the school offers students pro bono work, live client clinics, public service fellowships, competitions, and much more. Students also benefit from our location in one of the fastest growing, most livable, and economically vibrant regions in the U.S., and from our corporate externship partnerships with Fortune 500 companies. Our alumni have gone on to become judges, senators, and governors, and we serve communities throughout our state and nation through programs such as the Indigenous Food and Agriculture Initiative. Follow us at @uarklaw.