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The Right To Deportation Counsel In Padilla V. Kentucky: The Challenging Construction Of The Fifth-And-A-Half Amendment, Daniel Kanstroom
The Right To Deportation Counsel In Padilla V. Kentucky: The Challenging Construction Of The Fifth-And-A-Half Amendment, Daniel Kanstroom
Daniel Kanstroom
The U.S. Supreme Court’s pathbreaking decision in Padilla v. Kentucky seems reasonably simple and exact: Sixth Amendment norms were applied to noncitizen Jose Padilla’s claim that his criminal defense counsel was ineffective due to allegedly incorrect advice concerning the risk of deportation. This was a very significant move with virtues of both logic and justice. It will likely prevent many avoidable and wrongful deportations. It may also help some deportees who have been wrongly or unjustly deported in the past. However, the apparent exactness of the case, as a Sixth Amendment decision, raises fundamental constitutional questions. For more than a …
Padilla V. Kentucky And The Evolving Right To Deportation Counsel: Watershed Or Work-In-Progress?, Daniel Kanstroom
Padilla V. Kentucky And The Evolving Right To Deportation Counsel: Watershed Or Work-In-Progress?, Daniel Kanstroom
Daniel Kanstroom
Though widely heralded by immigration and human rights lawyers as a “landmark,” possible “watershed,” and even “Gideon decision” for immigrants, Padilla v. Kentucky is perhaps better understood as a Rorschach test, than as a clear constitutional precedent. It is surely a very interesting and important U.S. Supreme Court case in the (rapidly converging) fields of immigration and criminal law in which the Court struggles with the functional relationship between ostensibly “civil” deportation proceedings and criminal convictions. This is a gratifying development, for reasons not only of justice, fairness, proportionality, and basic human decency, but also (perhaps) of doctrinal consistency. The …