Law Commons^™

Analyzing the style of Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor's legal writing.

Immigration judges make consequential decisions that fundamentally affect the basic life chances of thousands of noncitizens and their family members every year. Yet, we know very little about how immigration judges make their decisions, including decisions about whether to release or detain noncitizens pending the completion of their immigration cases. Using original data on long-term immigrant detainees, I examine for the first time judicial decision-making in immigration bond hearings. I find that there are extremely wide variations in the average bond grant rates and bond amount decisions among judges in the study sample. What are the determinants of these bond …

The land one holds is generally only as good as the property rights contained in the deed.

The rights contained in the deed are only as good as the ability to get those rights enforced.

And, the enforcement is only valuable if it recognizes a determinate meaning in the deeds from

the point of conveyance. This Article pens the term “determinacy norm” to explain a collection

of rules for the interpretation of deed terms that aim to make the meaning of deed terms determinate.

I contend that, in order to satisfy the determinacy norm for deed interpretation,

courts must (and …