Notice & Comment

Symposium: Is Immigration Law Administrative Law?

Notice & Comment

Immigration Law Is Torn Between Administrative Law and Criminal Law, by Michael Kagan

The primary reason for the decline of immigration exceptionalism is that plenary power has become “subject to important constitutional limitations,” as the Supreme Court said in Zadvydas v. Davis. We do not yet have a complete picture of what all of those constitutional limitations are. We also know that plenary power has not entirely disappeared, […]

Notice & Comment

Rethinking Immigration Exceptionalism(s), by David S. Rubenstein

Donald Trump’s suggestion that we temporarily ban Muslim immigrants from entering the country sent shockwaves through the American psyche. Yet even more shocking, to some, is that Trump’s idea might be constitutional. For more than a century, the Supreme Court has crafted and maintained special doctrines for immigration that depart from mainstream legal norms. If […]

Notice & Comment

Employment Authorization and Prosecutorial Discretion: The Case for Immigration Unexceptionalism, by Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia

The exercise of prosecutorial discretion or “PD” is an important feature in the immigration system. It requires each DHS component to make decisions about whether a person legally eligible for immigration enforcement should still be allowed to reside in the United States on a temporary basis. PD recognizes that in a universe of limited resources, […]

Notice & Comment

Online Symposium: Is Immigration Law Administrative Law?, Introduction by Jill E. Family

What kind of law is immigration law? Is immigration law its own, exceptional creature, independent of all other areas of law? Or, is immigration law more porous, absorbing features of other closely related areas of law? Questions like these have challenged immigration law for some time. Even going back to the Nineteenth Century, the Supreme […]