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Immigration Law

Selected Works

Administrative law

Articles 1 - 9 of 9

Full-Text Articles in Law

The President’S Pen And The Bureaucrat’S Fiefdom, John C. Eastman May 2017

The President’S Pen And The Bureaucrat’S Fiefdom, John C. Eastman

John C. Eastman

Perhaps spurred by aggressive use of executive orders and “lawmaking” by administrative agencies by the last couple of presidential administrations, several Justices on the Supreme Court have recently expressed concern that the Court’s deference doctrines have undermined core separation of powers constitutional principles.  This article explores those Justice’s invitation to revisit those deference doctrines and some of the executive actions that have prompted the concern.

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An Unexceptional Aspect Of President Obama's Immigration Executive Actions, Jill Family Jan 2015

An Unexceptional Aspect Of President Obama's Immigration Executive Actions, Jill Family

Jill E. Family

Discussing Obama's recent immigration executive actions and the Obama administration's exercises of executive power.

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Does The Legal Standard Matter? Empirical Answers To Justice Kennedy’S Questions In Nken V. Holder, Christopher J. Walker May 2014

Does The Legal Standard Matter? Empirical Answers To Justice Kennedy’S Questions In Nken V. Holder, Christopher J. Walker

Christopher J. Walker

In response to Fatma Marouf, Michael Kagan & Rebecca Gill, Justice on the Fly: The Danger of Errant Deportations, 75 Ohio St. L.J. 337 (2014).

In Justice on the Fly: The Danger of Errant Deportations, Professors Fatma Marouf, Michael Kagan, and Rebecca Gill take on the ambitious task of answering the empirical questions posed by Justice Kennedy and others in Nken v. Holder with respect to the proper legal standard for judicial stays of removal in the immigration adjudication context. To answer these questions, the authors review, code, and analyze 1,646 cases in all circuits that hear immigration appeals and …

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The Ordinary Remand Rule And The Judicial Toolbox For Agency Dialogue, Christopher J. Walker Jan 2014

The Ordinary Remand Rule And The Judicial Toolbox For Agency Dialogue, Christopher J. Walker

Christopher J. Walker

When a court concludes that an agency’s decision is erroneous, the ordinary rule is to remand to the agency to consider the issue anew (as opposed to the court deciding the issue itself). Despite that the Supreme Court first articulated this ordinary remand rule in the 1940s and has rearticulated it repeatedly over the years, little work has been done to understand how the rule works in practice, much less whether it promotes the separation-of-powers values that motivate the rule. This Article is the first to conduct such an investigation—focusing on judicial review of agency immigration adjudications and reviewing the …

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Easing The Guidance Document Dilemma Agency By Agency: Immigration Law And Not Really Binding Rules, Jill Family Dec 2012

Easing The Guidance Document Dilemma Agency By Agency: Immigration Law And Not Really Binding Rules, Jill Family

Jill E. Family

Immigration law relies on rules that bind effectively, but not legally, to adjudicate millions of applications for immigration benefits every year. This article provides a blueprint for immigration law to improve its use of these practically binding rules, often called guidance documents. The agency that adjudicates immigration benefit applications, United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), should develop and adopt its own Good Guidance Practices to govern how it uses guidance documents. This article recommends both a mechanism for reform, the Good Guidance Practices, and tackles many complex issues that USCIS will need to address in creating its practices. The …

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Administrative Law Through The Lens Of Immigration Law, Jill Family Dec 2011

Administrative Law Through The Lens Of Immigration Law, Jill Family

Jill E. Family

Immigration law does lag behind in the advancement of public law, but not in all respects. While immigration law is idiosyncratic in many ways, this article finds immigration law in the administrative law mainstream when it comes to its troubles with nonlegislative rules (sometimes called guidance documents). There are concerns throughout administrative law that agencies use such rules to bind regulated parties practically, even if not legally, without the procedural protections of notice and comment.
This article analyzes immigration troubles with nonlegislative rules and makes three main contributions. First, it casts new light on the negative effects of guidance documents …

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Murky Immigration Law And The Challenges Facing Immigration Removal And Benefits Adjudication, Jill Family Dec 2010

Murky Immigration Law And The Challenges Facing Immigration Removal And Benefits Adjudication, Jill Family

Jill E. Family

Immigration adjudication is more diverse than it may seem. Scholars tend to focus on one aspect of administrative immigration adjudication, the decision-making process established to determine whether an individual may be removed (deported) from the United States. But there is a whole other function of administrative immigration adjudication that relatively is ignored in the legal literature. Immigration adjudicators are also tasked with determining whether to grant immigration benefits, such as whether to grant lawful permanent resident (green card) status.
Both types of administrative immigration adjudication, removal and benefits, are in crisis. This article explores the challenges facing each and argues …

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"Streamlining" The Rule Of Law: How The Department Of Justice Is Undermining Judicial Review Of Agency Action, Shruti Rana May 2009

"Streamlining" The Rule Of Law: How The Department Of Justice Is Undermining Judicial Review Of Agency Action, Shruti Rana

Shruti Rana

Judicial review of administrative decision making is an essential institutional check on agency power. Recently, however, the Department of Justice dramatically revised its regulations in an attempt to insulate its decision making from public and federal court scrutiny. These “streamlining” rules, carried out in the name of national security and immigration reform, have led to a breakdown in the rule of law in our judicial system. While much attention has been focused on the Department of Justice’s recent attempts to shield executive power from the reach of Congress, its efforts to undermine judicial review have so far escaped such scrutiny. …

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A Broader View Of The Immigration Adjudication Problem, Jill Family Dec 2008

A Broader View Of The Immigration Adjudication Problem, Jill Family

Jill E. Family

Are too many individuals diverted from civil immigration adjudication? Each year, the government completes millions of diversions from civil immigration adjudication through explicit and implicit waivers, the expedited removal program and the increasing criminalization of immigration law.
By uncovering and analyzing this diversion phenomenon, this article exposes an important piece of the immigration adjudication problem that has been largely undiagnosed. While judges, scholars, government officials and practitioners have acknowledged serious problems within the civil immigration adjudication system, this article widens the view to incorporate the issue of whether too many are being sidetracked from the system altogether.
This article concludes …

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