Law Profs File Amicus Brief in Right to Counsel for Minors Appeal

Last week, law professors  Judith Resnik and Brian Soucek, with the assistance of the law firm of Munger Tolles & Olson LLP, filed an amicus brief in C.J.L.G. v. Sessions (now Whitaker), in which the Ninth Circuit has gone en banc to decide whether migrant children in removal hearings have a right to government-funded counsel. The brief focuses on the Supreme Court’s forty years of procedural due process case law applying the Mathews v. Eldridge balancing test. Oral argument is expected in December. Our brief is here. 

The conclusion of the brief reads as follows:

“Decades of case law makes clear how the Mathews balancing test should be used to analyze procedural due process claims, including those raising the right to counsel in civil contexts. Using the Supreme Court’s test and considering the information in the record about the needs of children, the factual density of immigration claims, and the complexity of the legal questions involved, the conclusion which emerges is that the Constitution requires the appointment of counsel for indigent children in deportation proceedings”

KJ