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Immigration Beyond the Headlines

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Most Recent Print Issue

Volume 71, Issue 3


Article

Passive Avoidance

by  Anita S. Krishnakumar

In its nascent years, the Roberts Court quickly developed a reputation—and drew sharp criticism—for using the canon of constitutional avoidance to rewrite statutes in controversial, high-profile cases. In recent years, however, the Court seems to have taken a new turn, quietly creating exceptions or reading in statutory conditions in order to evade potentially serious constitutional…

Article

Attempted Justice

Misunderstanding and Bias in Psychological Constructions of Criminal Attempt
by  Avani Mehta Sood

How do jurors construe and apply facts and law to decide the point at which a defendant’s thoughts and actions cross the line from being legally innocent to criminal? And under what doctrinal circumstances are such lay constructions of criminality vulnerable to legal misunderstanding and bias? Although these are high-stakes questions, the black box of…

Article

Nonvoting Shares and Efficient Corporate Governance

by  Dorothy S. Lund

A growing number of technology companies, including Google, Zillow, and Snap, have issued stock that does not allow investors to vote on corporate decisions. But there is fundamental disagreement among scholars and investors about whether nonvoting stock is beneficial or harmful. Critics argue that nonvoting shares perpetually insulate corporate insiders from influence and oversight, and…

Note

Identifying Limits to Immigration Detention Transfers and Venue

by  Adrienne Pon

The government claims that it may transfer immigration detainees to any detention facility across the country. The scale of the current transfer practice is staggering—more than half of all detainees experience at least one transfer, and detainees are often transferred to the Fifth or Eleventh Circuits. This choice in detention location, in turn, essentially determines…

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Recent Online Essays

Privatized Detention & Immigration Federalism

The vast majority of detained immigrants are held in facilities operated by private corporations. This multibillion-dollar industry shapes immigration policies directly through contractual implementation, and indirectly through lobbying at all levels of government. Over the past decade, academics and dedicated advocates have shed critical light on the structural causes and effects of privatized immigration detention, offering a range of policy prescriptions along the way. Until now, however, federalism has been a virtual blind spot in that reformist agenda. Intervening, this Essay draws federalism into the spotlight. And not a moment too soon.

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Crediting Migrants

Credit facilitates migration, and it may also provide a theoretical framework to understand it. This Essay examines the role of credit and financing in migration by focusing on changes to the “public charge” ground of inadmissibility—American immigration law’s nearly 150-year-old test for prohibiting migration by those financially dependent on governmental assistance. In October 2018, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) that would change how the agency will determine an immigrant’s likelihood of becoming a public charge and the consequences flowing from that determination.

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Detention as Deterrence

Does immigration detention deter unauthorized migration? This is a pressing question with critical policy implications given that the U.S. government has detained tens of thousands of migrants in reliance on this deterrence rationale. Briefly described, the federal government has argued that “one particular individual may be civilly detained for the sake of sending a message” to others “who may be considering immigration.” In recent times, the potential migrants to whom the federal government has sought to send such a message are, by and large, from Mexico and Central America. Emerging empirical research, however, provides little to no evidence that detention has had the type and level of deterrent effect desired by the federal government. Why might this be so? This Essay addresses this question by examining three key “deterrence hurdles” that present challenges to detention as deterrence.

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White Nationalism as Immigration Policy

Introduction Two years into the Trump presidency, white nationalism may be driving the Administration’s immigration policy. We view white nationalism as “the belief that national identity should be built around white ethnicity, and that white people should therefore maintain both a demographic majority and dominance of the nation’s culture and public life.” We do not…

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Refugee Litigation in the Trump Era: Protecting Overseas Humanitarian Migrants in U.S. Courts

As 2017 began, thousands of refugees and other displaced persons abroad were on their paths to escaping the dangers of their home countries through one of several U.S. humanitarian migration pathways. John Doe 1, an Iraqi citizen whose life was in danger because of his service as an interpreter for the U.S. Army, had been conditionally approved for refugee resettlement to the U.S., where he planned to reestablish his life with the support of his former military supervisor. J.A., a young woman in El Salvador who had been repeatedly threatened by gang members, had completed every step of processing for her parole application under the Central American Minors program and had been told that she and her son would soon be on a flight to reunite with her mother, who has been living in the U.S. with lawful status.

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SLR in the News

The Supreme Court of Michigan cites Textualism and the Fourteenth Amendment in its opinion in Citizens Protecting Michigan’s Constitution v. Secretary of State.

A Supreme Court of Texas decision cites in its reasoning Torts and Estates: Remedying Wrongful Interference with Inheritance.

 

 

 

A Time Magazine story about sexual harassment law cites the Open Statement from the #MeToo and the Future of Sexual Harassment Law symposium.

Justice Thomas cites Who Are “Officers of the United States”? in his concurring opinions in Lucia v. Securities and Exchange Commission and in Ortiz v. United States.

 

 

 

 

An ABC News story about legal issues regarding asylum seekers at the U.S. border cites Refugee Roulette: Disparities in Asylum Adjudication.

Justice Sotomayor cites Statutory Interpretation From the Inside—An Empirical Study of Congressional Drafting, Delegation and the Canons: Part I in her concurring opinion in Digital Realty Trust, Inc. v. Somers.

 

Featured Topic in the Law

The First Amendment

The First Amendment has been tasked with covering a wide swath of rights since its inception. But cutting-edge technology, modern forms of communication, and growing political tensions have all pushed judicial interpretation of the First Amendment in new directions. Here are a few pieces from the Stanford Law Review archives on the issue.

Is Data Speech?

Confederate Statute Removal

Criminalization in Context

Expanding the Periphery and Threatening the Core