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Full-Text Articles in Law
Discretion And Disobedience In The Chinese Exclusion Era, Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia
Discretion And Disobedience In The Chinese Exclusion Era, Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia
Journal Articles
This Article examines the use of prosecutorial discretion from its first recorded use in the nineteenth century to protect Chinese subject to deportation, following to its implication in modern day immigration policy. A foundational Supreme Court case, known as Fong Yue Ting, provides a historical precedent for the protection of a category of people as well as a deeper history of prosecutorial discretion in immigration law. This Article also sharpens the policy argument to protect political activists through prosecutorial discretion and forces consideration for how modern immigration policy should respond to historical exclusions and racialized laws. This Article centers its …
Decitizenizing Asian Pacific American Women, Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia, Margaret Hu
Decitizenizing Asian Pacific American Women, Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia, Margaret Hu
Journal Articles
The Page Act of 1875 excluded Asian women immigrants from entering the United States, presuming they were prostitutes. This presumption was tragically replicated in the 2021 Atlanta Massacre of six Asian and Asian American women, reinforcing the same harmful prejudices. This Article seeks to illuminate how the Atlanta Massacre is symbolic of larger forms of discrimination, including the harms of decitizenship. These harms include limited access to full citizenship rights due to legal barriers, restricted cultural and political power, and a lack of belonging. The Article concludes that these harms result from the structure of past and present immigration laws …
Elusive Equality: Reflections On Justice Field’S Opinions In Chae Chan Ping And Fong Yue Ting, Victor C. Romero
Elusive Equality: Reflections On Justice Field’S Opinions In Chae Chan Ping And Fong Yue Ting, Victor C. Romero
Journal Articles
For immigration scholars, Justice Field is perhaps best remembered for his majority opinion in Chae Chan Ping v. United States, the Supreme Court’s decision upholding Chinese exclusion, and credited for introducing the plenary power doctrine to immigration law. Yet, despite the opinion’s xenophobic rhetoric reflecting his personal views of the Chinese, Justice Field dissented in Fong Yue Ting v. United States, reasoning that, once they became lawful residents, the Chinese were entitled to be treated as equals under the law regardless of citizenship, a position supported by his earlier federal circuit court opinion in Ho Ah Kow v. …