Immigration Law Commons^™

Disaggregating "Immigration Law", Mathew J. Lindsay

Florida Law Review

Courts and scholars have long noted the constitutional exceptionalism of the federal immigration power, decried the injustice it produces, and appealed for greater constitutional protection for noncitizens. This Article builds on this robust literature while focusing on a particularly critical conceptual and doctrinal obstacle to legal reform—the notion that laws governing the rights of noncitizens to enter and remain within the United States comprise a distinct body of “immigration laws” presumed to be part and parcel of foreign affairs and national security.

This Article argues that the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent immigration jurisprudence suggests a willingness to temper, and perhaps …

The President And Immigration Federalism, Pratheepan Gulasekaram, S. Karthick Ramakrishnan

Florida Law Review

This Article lays out a systematic, conceptual framework to better understand the relationship between federal executive action and state- level legislation in immigration. Prior immigration law scholarship has focused on structural power questions between the U.S. federal government—as a unitary entity—and the states, while newer scholarship has examined separation of powers concerns between the President and Congress. This Article builds on both of these traditions, focusing on the intersectional relationship between the federal Executive and subfederal lawmaking, which is an important yet overlooked dynamic in the resurgence of immigration federalism. First, this Article explains the relationship between presidential action and …