Law & Society Flashback: New Frames in Immigration Law

The LSA panel New Frames in Immigration Law took place at 8:15AM on a Saturday. It’s a miracle that the audience was larger than the panel. But it was.

Joe Landau (Fordham) spoke about his observation that an “anti-animus principle” has been used by courts in a wide range of constitutional rulings as a means to suppress actions by the political branches that are driven by “hysteria, panic and immoderation.” The anti-animus principle functions to enforce a “foundational requirement of deliberation” that can be lacking in “panic-fueled legislation.”

I talked about the value of flexibility in law generally (think “reasonable person”) and it’s surprising absence from immigration law, which is largely characterized by extreme inflexibility. I argued that we should seek to imbue flexibility into the decisionmaking surrounding immigration law.

Eleanor Brown (GW) discussed her fascinating work on the success of West Indian-Americans, who generally own and rent higher quality housing than African-Americans. It’s a phenomenon that owes much to the history of West Indian land ownership in their countries of emigration.

Rose Cuison-Villazor (Davis) addressed her work on “interstitial citizenship,” which is the phrase she has coined to address American national status. These nationals have some indices of U.S. citizenship – unlike “aliens” they carry U.S. passports and cannot be deported – yet they lack access to other key  features of citizenship – including voting, jury service, and USC-specific jobs.

Finally, sociologist Katherine Abbott (New Hampshire) talked about her in depth analysis of editorial cartoons regarding the Syrian and UAC crises. Happily, she had a powerpoint presentation so that she could share some of the images she analyzed with us.

A great big thank you to Hiroshi Motomura (UCLA) for his insightful comments and questions.

-KitJ