Judges Commons^™

The Case Against Absolute Judicial Immunity For Immigration Judges

Minnesota Journal of Law & Inequality

A federal regulation states that immigration hearings shall be open to the public. Courts and scholars also have located a right to observe these proceedings in the First Amendment. And yet immigration judges (IJ) have excluded members of the press and other observers from hearings for no stated legal reasons, thus effectively eliminating public scrutiny of proceedings that affect millions of citizens and non-citizens in the United States. In response to a lawsuit pursuing monetary, injunctive, and declaratory relief after an IJ ordered guards to remove a reporter from a federal building, an Eleventh Circuit panel held IJs have absolute …