Comment on OLC’s Endorsement of DAPA

Mark Jia, photo via China Hands

Harvard Law School rising 3L Mark Jia recently published a short comment for the Harvard Law Review analyzing the Office of Legal Counsel’s November 19, 2014 memo defending President Obama’s executive order on Deferred Action for Parental Accountability.

The comment begins with a nice summary of the OLC’s position. But it offers more, criticizing the memos for “seem[ing] to preclude the legality of DACA” and failing to “grapple seriously enough with the genuine complexities attendant to discerning Congress’s immigration goals.”

Jia concludes that the OLC’s analysis “remains vulnerable to several internal criticisms that may continue to haunt the Administration’s efforts to place its nonenforcement choices upon firm legal footing.”

-KitJ