Law Commons^™

There And Back, Now And Then: Iirira’S Retroactivity And The Normalization Of Judicial Review In Immigration Law, Austen Ishii

Fordham Law Review

The U.S. Supreme Court has a long tradition of treating immigration law as “exceptional,” deferring to Congress and executive agencies when determining the scope of various immigration laws. The Court’s refusal to subject immigration statutes to the ordinary level of judicial review has left immigrants even more susceptible to the effects of anti-immigrant legislation.

When the Court decided Fernandez-Vargas v. Gonzales in 2006 it increased the scope of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (IIRIRA) by allowing portions of the statute to be applied to immigrants who had reentered the United States prior to its effective …