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January 20, 2016

Immigration Law Training at the Ninth Circuit

Last week, the United States Court of Appeals held an Immigration Law Training at its courthouse in Pasadena, California. The training included sessions on motions practice, mediation, brief writing, and oral argument. I spoke on two panels: one called "Jurisdiction and Motions Practice" and the other called "Preparing Your Brief." I had the privilege of speaking on the same panel with Judge Jacqueline H. Nguyen of the Ninth Circuit on appellate brief writing. Immigration practice before the Ninth Circuit is a critical component of the court's work. In 2014, immigration matters and appeals brought by inmates in state or federal prisons within the circuit constituted two-thirds of the new filings in the Ninth Circuit.

 

January 20, 2016

United States v. Texas: Mountain or Molehill?

Cross-posted from ACSblog.

The Supreme Court granted certiorari this week in United States v. Texas; the case will undoubtedly be one of the term’s most interesting, important, or both. In a 2-1 decision, the Fifth Circuit invalidated the Obama Administration’s DAPA program making “deferred action” available to as many as four million unauthorized migrants who are parents of U.S. citizens or green card holders. Deferred action represents a formal decision by the government to exercise prosecutorial discretion not to initiate deportation proceedings; it creates neither a right to remain nor a path to permanent status. However, by regulation, the government may grant work authorization to holders of deferred action.

The Court will review several critical questions.

The merits issues are whether the administration had the power to establish the program, and if it did, whether it should have gone through formal notice and comment under the Administrative Procedure Act. As Congress does not appropriate enough money to completely enforce the immigration laws (or any other laws, for that matter) there is no question that prosecutorial discretion, for better or for worse, is inevitable. There is also little doubt that even in the government, bosses are allowed to give direction to subordinates about how programs are to be carried out.

The line between permissible “guidance” and formal, binding enforcement rules requiring notice and comment is debated by the parties. But given that the program does not purport to give noncitizens enforceable rights to relief and allows for case by case, discretionary evaluation of applications in the field, there is a strong reason to believe that the program constitutes permissible enforcement guidance. Certainly it is hard to dispute the idea that, in principle, discretion should be exercised consistently, transparently, and based on reasons rather than at the whims of individual officers in the field. I consider it unlikely that a majority of the Court will rule that general, non-binding guidance of this sort is impermissible.

However, the Court may well not reach the merits. Texas claims standing to sue on the ground that it chooses to offer non-citizens with deferred action discounted driver’s licenses, and creating more people with deferred action will likely result in more people seeking the discount. This self-created, de minimis harm is a thin reed for standing. It is particularly interesting because the Court sua sponte directed the parties to brief the question of whether the administration’s policy implicated the president’s obligation to take care that the laws be faithfully executed.

This case shows that states are often deeply concerned about federal law enforcement or lack thereof; 40-some states joined briefs supporting or opposing cert. I’m going to go out on a limb and predict that the Court will not rule both that states have standing on the ground that different federal enforcement policies would reduce their costs, and that states have the right to insist that the president enforce their preferred laws. If the Court did, we (and the Court) would witness an unprecedented blizzard of litigation.

Kevin R. Johnson has written about the politics of the case here.

January 20, 2016

Launch of the Handbook on Corporate Governance in India

This week has been one filled with excitement, education and some jet lag.  I have been involved in a whirlwind of activity connected with the launch of the Handbook on Corporate Governance in India which I have authored. The handbook has been a labor of love for me over the past several years as India has significantly transformed the laws and regulations concerning corporate governance practices of Indian companies. I have intended for the handbook to serve as a useful tool for those involved in the corporate governance field in India, including Board members, in-house counsel, corporate secretaries and other advisors such as auditors, outside counsel, investment banks and proxy advisory firms. The handbook is unique in that it collates the issues and practices from various areas of corporate governance and presents it in a consolidated and comprehensive manner. One of my goals was for the handbook to capture both the academic research in this field as well as the latest legal developments in India in an era of rapid shifts. The handbook discusses the changes enacted in the Companies Act, 2013 and the Companies Amendment Act in early 2015, as well the flurry of rules made by the Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA) and the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI).

For the launch, we had an event in Delhi in a room filled with various luminaries, former government officials and many members of boards of directors from well-known listed companies in India.  We have had two similar events in Mumbai, one in North Mumbai and one in the South (if you have ever been in Mumbai traffic, you know well why there needed to be launch events in both locations). Like the Delhi events, the Mumbai events were attended by members of boards of directors from prominent Indian companies who came together both to learn and to contribute to the discussion on how to move Indian corporate governance forward. I am happy to report that the handbook and the discussions we had were all quite well-received.

It's been an eye opening experience talking to those who deal with corporate governance challenges (and opportunities) day to day. I came away from these events even more inspired to dive into research related to governance issues in the Indian landscape.

For more information, here is the press release about the handbook.

January 19, 2016

The Supreme Court Adds ‘Take Care Clause’ to the DAPA Debate

Cross-posted from ACSblog.

The Supreme Court granted certiorari in United States v. Texas today, agreeing to hear the federal government's questions on its immigration policy and adding one more. The Court will decide whether the federal government's policy to postpone the deportations of millions who are in the United States in undocumented status is arbitrary and capricious, whether it was subject to the APA's notice and comment procedures, and whether the states have standing to sue. The Court added a question that was not decided in the lower courts, namely, whether the policy violates the Take Care Clause in Art. II, Sec. 3, which requires the president to take care that the laws of the United States are faithfully executed.

At issue in this case is the president's announcement of a guidance that would defer action on the undocumented noncitizens in the United States who have lived in the United States for five years and who came as children, or who have U.S. citizen or permanent resident children. The federal government claims that the president's guidance is permitted under immigration law, which allows the Department of Homeland Security to postpone, for its own convenience or for humanitarian reasons, the removal of noncitizens from the United States. The immigration statute also allows the Department of Homeland Security, for its own convenience, to issue employment authorization to these individuals. Notably, deferred action does not bestow any form of legal status on noncitizens, nor does it provide any benefit.

The most interesting part of the Court's grant is its signal that it will decide whether the president's guidance violates the Constitution's Take Care Clause. The questions of whether the president has faithfully executed the laws of the United States requires a deep understanding of the multi-dimensional nature of the immigration law at stake.

Immigration law has historically included both enforcement and humanitarian aspects. While the enforcement provisions give the executive branch wide latitude in determining whether individuals are removable, the humanitarian provisions also give the executive branch great latitude in determining whether removal is warranted given an individual's circumstances. By providing guidance on deferral of removal in a set of cases that warrant the executive branch's discretion - discretion delegated by Congress - the president has fulfilled his duties under the Clause.

If the Supreme Court accepts the multi-dimensionality of immigration law, it will find that the executive branch has done exactly what the Take Care Clause requires: It has created a guidance that reflects the multi-dimensional aspects of immigration law while maintaining its duty to stay within the contours of existing law.

January 19, 2016

United States v. Texas: A Constitutional Dialogue Years in the Making

Cross-posted from Immigration Prof Blog.

Not surprisingly, the Supreme Court granted the petition for certiorari in United States v. Texas, and the nation may receive the final word on the lawfulness of the 2014 program expanding deferred action for the undocumented parents of parents of lawful permanent residents and U.S. citizen children. The case raises important, complex, and significant legal issues with national ramifications. Although the immigration issues are critically important, the more general issues implicated by the case, such as the relative power of the Legislative and Executive Branches in the enforcement of the law, go well beyond immigration.

The case is rooted in many years of controversy over immigration and immigration reform. The legal issues are technical and have been, and will be, much-debated over the coming months. Many critics have vociferously challenged the Obama administration's executive action is attempting to arrogate power bestowed by the Constitution on Congress. My firm sense is that the constitutional dialogue is a healthy one about the boundaries on congressional and executive power on immigration.

To fully understand United States v. Texas, one also must appreciate that it is a product of at least a decade of national debate over immigration. There are many actors in long dialogue on immigration reform.

Congress

Over at least the last decade, Congress has debated various forms of immigration reform legislation. An enforcement-oriented bill passed by the House of Representatives led to memorable public protests in cities across the country in 2006.  To this point in time, no legislation has been passed and frustration exists among many Americans, immigrants, and political leaders.

In this vein, a potent political movement led by undocumented college students had demanded more narrowly focused reform of the immigration laws. The DREAM Act (Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors) has been proposed regularly in Congress, with support from, among others, conservative Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah).  Although garnering substantial support, it has not attracted sufficient support to be passed.  Most iterations of the DREAM Act would allow undocumented persons who came here as children to regularize their immigration status.

Congress has debated many bills that would have reformed the immigration laws. In the most recent attempt, the Senate in 2013 passed a bipartisan comprehensive immigration reform bill that would have provided a path to legalization for undocumented immigrants, reformed legal immigration provisions, and bolstered immigration enforcement.  Unfortunately, the bill never was sent to the full House of Representatives.

States

The failure of Congress to enact immigration reform had impacts as state and local governments in recent years have enacted immigration-related laws. Many of the laws were designed to facilitate immigration enforcement and implicated questions of federalism and federal supremacy.  The most well-known law of this type is Arizona's S.B. 1070, which the Supreme Court struck down as preempted by federal immigration law in large part in 2012 in Arizona v. United States.   

Other states, such as California, have sought to better integrate immigrant residents into the greater community. Laws extending driver's license eligibility to undocumented immigrants, and allowing them to pay resident tuition at public universities, exemplify those kinds of efforts.  

Executive Branch

The deferred action program has attracted considerable amount of attention. However, the Obama administration has made removals and immigration enforcement high priorities.  Through its Secure Communities and later Priority Enforcement Program, the administration targeted immigrants convicted of crimes for removal.  The hope was to establish a strong enforcement record and ultimately to convince Congress to enact comprehensive immigration reform.  To that end, the Obama administration has set annual deportation records a few years in a row and regularly removes hundreds of thousands of immigrants a year.  It also has taken enforcement-oriented positions, including detention of families and recently announced raids, attempting to deter Central Americans fleeing violence from coming to the United States.  

The Obama administration implemented the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Program in 2012. In November 2014, the administration announced the Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents (DAPA). A federal court in South Texas enjoined the implementation of the program and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirmed the injunction in November.  The Supreme Court now will review the case.

The Supreme Court

The Supreme Court has had regularly heard immigration cases for a number of years, often addressing cases in which the Executive Branch sought to remove long term lawful permanent residents for criminal offenses.  Last Term, the Court, for example, decided Mellouli v. Lynch  and rejected the effort to remove an immigrant for a minor drug paraphernalia conviction. In 2013, the Court rejected a removal order in Moncrieffe v. Holder based on a conviction involving the possession of a small amount of marijuana for personal use.

The Court's major immigration decision in recent years is Arizona v. United States.  The Court made it clear that federal law was supreme when it comes to immigration and invalidated several provisions of the Arizona law that it found intruded on that power.  The decision surprised some Court observers who predicted that the Roberts Court might uphold the Arizona law in its entirety. 

United States v. Texas

In United States v. Texas, the technical legal questions are as follows: (1) do the states have standing to challenged DAPA; (2) whether the Secretary of Homeland Security's guidance known as DAPA seeking to establish a process for considering deferred action for certain aliens because it will lead to more aliens having deferred action is arbitrary and capricious or otherwise not in accordance with law; and (3) whether the guidance was subject to the Administrative Procedure Act's notice-and-comment procedures. In the background of the briefs is a claim under Article II of the Constitution that imposes a duty on the President unlike that he "shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed."  The Supreme Court specifically stated that the constitutional question was before it.

The politically charged nature of the issue brought amici briefs on the cert petition from many different quarters, including a bipartisan Former Members of Congress, Major Cities Chiefs Association, 184 Members of the U.S. House of Representatives and 34 Members of the U.S, Senate, the state of Washington and other states, former federal Immigration and Homeland Security Officials, Mayors of New York and other cities.

The outcome of United States v. Texas will be debated. What does seem clear is that the nation is engaging in a robust national debate about immigration law and policy.  We will see how that latest chapter unfolds before the Supreme Court.

January 16, 2016

Does Ted Cruz's Conditional Citizenship Affect the "Natural Born Citizen" Analysis?

Cross-posted from PrawfsBlawg.

I have previously written that Senator Ted Cruz is a natural born citizen, eligible to the presidency, because he was a citizen at birth.  Though born in Canada and having a father of Cuban heritage, his mother was a U.S. citizen; the Immigration and Nationality Act also made him one under the circumstances.  Neal Katyal and Paul Clement, Michael Ramsey, Randy Barnett, and many others, persuasively argue (and this is a paraphrase) that if Congress makes a person a full member of the U.S. political community at birth, that person is a natural born citizen.  (See also classic Charles Gordon article here).  In Wong Kim Ark in 1898, the Supreme Court, quoting a leading treatise, stated: "Natural-born British subject' means a British subject who has become a British subject at the moment of his birth." 169 U.S. 649, 657 (1898) (italics in original). 

There is a catch, though, that has apparently not been addressed.  Under the law in effect in 1970, when Cruz was born, a child born abroad to two U.S. citizen parents was generally an unconditional U.S. citizen.  However, a person like Senator Cruz with a single USC parent had only contingent citizenship, and would automatically lose U.S. citizenship and nationality unless she that child spent five years in the United States between the ages of 14 and 28.  In Rogers v. Bellei, 401 U.S. 815 (1971), the Court, 5-4, upheld the citizenship termination provision.  Senator Cruz's citizenship was perfected in 1978, when Congress eliminated the retention requirement.  But when he was born, Rogers v. Bellei explained, Congress granted children in his situation "presumptive," "conditional" citizenship, not "absolute," "full" citizenship, because Congress had a "legitimate concern" that non-citizen parentage coupled with foreign birth raised questions of "divided loyalty" and "primary allegiance" which should be resolved by future U.S. residence. 

The case remains strong that Congress has the power to make children of one or two U.S. citizen parents full members of the political community at birth, even if born overseas.  Therefore if Senator Cruz had been born in 1980, he would, fairly clearly, be a natural born citizen.  But there is wide agreement that a person either is, or is not, a natural born citizen at the moment of birth; automatic loss of citizenship based on future circumstances is in tension with this.  Congress granted Senator Cruz a status that did not guarantee that he would even be allowed into the country after age 23, because they did not fully trust people like him.  Focusing on the conditional nature of Senator Cruz's status makes it less clear than it was that Congress either intended to make children with one U.S. citizen parent full and equal members of the political community, or exercised its authority to do so.  I would love to hear what other people think.

Update: My intellectual heroes Jack Balkin and Akhil Amar also discuss the issue. Prof. Balkin and Prof. Amar each recently gave wonderful lectures at UC Davis Law.

January 15, 2016

Immigration Article of the Day: "The Mediterranean Migration: A Clash of Titans' Obligations?" by Barbara Miltner

Cross-posted from Immigration Prof Blog.

Here's my pick for Immigration Article of the Day for the blog:

The Mediterranean Migration: A Clash of Titans' Obligations? by Barbara Miltner, UC Davis School of Law, December 2015, The Brown Journal of World Affairs, Fall/Winter 2015, Vol. XXII, Issue I, UC Davis Legal Studies Research Paper No. 476

Abstract: Nearly 670,000 migrants crossed the Mediterranean to reach European shores in the first ten months of 2015. The influx has been characterized as the greatest migration crisis since World War II. The associated death toll is equally alarming. In April alone, over 800 migrants died in the largest maritime refugee disaster on record, provoking calls for an immediate response. Following an emergency summit, EU leaders reacted by launching new criminal anti-smuggling measures and an intensive maritime surveillance program in the Mediterranean, among other measures. The response has been criticized for its emphasis on militarized border control strategies at the expense of humanitarian protection measures in relation to maritime rescue and asylum screening. Certainly, such an enforcement-oriented approach to border controls is not new, but it is legally problematic. This article examines the latest European response to the Mediterranean migration crisis from an international legal standpoint. It considers aspects of the proposal with regard to the roles and conduct of individual member states, as well as those of the EU border control agency Frontex. The article examines recent jurisprudential developments, both within and beyond the European sphere, to highlight new and emerging legal limitations on state actors at sea.

January 15, 2016

Jack Chin to Discuss Hong Yen Chang Case in Riverside

Professor Gabriel "Jack" Chin will make a presentation on his work on the Hong Yen Chang case before the Riverside County Bar Association in May. He'll be joined by attorney Josh Meltzer of Munger Tolles and Olson LLP.

Chang, an 1886 Columbia Law School grad, was denied a license to practice in California because of laws that discriminated against Chinese immigrants. Last year, the California Supreme Court granted him posthumous admission to the bar, thanks to the efforts of Professor Chin and members of our Asian Pacific American Law Students Association (APALSA).

 

 

January 8, 2016

King Hall Faculty at AALS Annual Meeting 2016

I am at the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) Annual Meeting at the New York Hilton Midtown.

Here is a rundown of the panels in which King Hall faculty members are speakers or moderators.

"The ADA at 25: Implications for People with Mental Disabilities"
Speaker from a Call for Papers: Jasmine E. Harris
Topic: "I take up the question of what remains to be done in an area that the ADA has not (and perhaps could not) reach: state regulation of sexual expression of people with mental disabilities."

"Service: Challenge, Opportunity and Passion" and "Teaching and Outsider Status"
Plenary Session at the Workshop for Pretenured Faculty of Color
Speaker: Kevin R. Johnson

"Indian Tribes, Same-Sex Marriage, and LGBT Families"
Speaker: Rose Cuison Villazor
Topic: Marriage Equality in American Samoa

"Animal Rights: From Why to How"
Speaker: Angela P. Harris
Topic: "What can the animal rights movement learn from other social movements seeking racial equality, rights for women, LGBT individuals, indigenous peoples, and individuals with disabilities?"

"Transactional Lawyering and Contractual Innovation"
Moderator: Afra Afsharipour

I just posted an entry about these and other King Hall-related activities at AALS (including an alumni reception and our faculty members in leadership positions) over on the Dean's Blog.

January 4, 2016

Op-Ed on Trump Featured among NLJ Opinion Highlights

The National Law Journal featured my recent opinion article on Donald Trump's immigration proposal (if you can call it that, given how short it is on specifics) in its "Year in Opinion" highlights of 2015.

To see the original article, read it on the NLJ site or on the Faculty Blog.

Here's a link to the roundup of the "Year in Opinion" pieces.