RIP Justice Scalia
Yesterday, Justice Antonin Scalia died. There are many news reports about his passing and the appointment of his replacement. Scalia was an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1986 until his death. Appointed to the Court by President Ronald Reagan in 1986, Scalia was often described as the intellectual anchor for the Court’s conservative wing.
ImmigrationProf in the next week or two will offer a review of Justice Scalia’s immigration jurisprudence, which tended to be deferential to the Board of Immigration Appeals‘ decisions. He wrote the majority opinion in INS v. Elias-Zacarias (1992), in which the Court ruled that a Guatemalan asylum seeker who had fled forced conscription in the guerrillas failed to establish the necessary “persecution on account of political opinion” to be granted asylum in the United States. Justice Scalia penned a blistering dissent in Arizona v. United States (2012), in which the Court invalidated core provisions of the Arizona immigration enforcement law known as S.B. 1070; Justice Scalia took the opportunity to vent about the Obama administration’s immigration policies, including the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.
There will be speculation about how Scalia’s death might affect the outcome in United States v. Texas. My guess would have been that he would have voted to allow the injunction to remain intact.
KJ