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ImmigrationProf Blog
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REAL ID Article

By immigrationprof

Professor (and Broadway star (here) Daniel Kanstroom (Boston College) has a new article entitled “The Better Part of Valor: The REAL ID Act, Discretion, and the ‘Rule’ of Immigration Law.”  Here is a link to the abstract: http://lsr.nellco.org/bc/bclsfp/papers/191/

Download the paper: http://lsr.nellco.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1192&context=bc/bclsfp

This article considers the problems raised by a federal law–the “REAL ID Act”–that seeks to preclude judicial review of discretionary immigration law decisions. Discretion, the flexible shock absorber of the administrative state, must be respected by our legal system. However, as Justice Felix Frankfurter once wrote, discretion is, “only to be respected when it is conscious of the traditions which surround it and of the limits which an informed conscience sets to its exercise.” The article suggests that judicial construction of the REAL ID Act will plumb the deep meaning of this qualification.

For the latest (Feb. 22) Ninth Circuit pronouncement on the review of “questions of law” under REAL ID, click here.  Thanks for Cappy White for this tip!

KJ