Vastine on the Categorical Approach in 2023

Check out the work of immprof Michael Vastine (St. Thomas) over at Think Immigration–Find a Unicorn, Slay a Dragon: The Categorical Approach, Circa 2023. His article tackles the issues I brought up here in February about when a controlled substance isn’t a controlled substance because… science.

I love this line in his piece: “It is no small wonder that the Supreme Court repeatedly has used “burglary” offenses to illustrate the categorical approach, as it is much easier to picture variations of that crime, compared to chemical definitions.”

Hell freakin’ yeah. I use the same burglary example to teach the categorical approach. Getting students to understand isomers is next level stuff. That said, I will 100% be talking about the 8th and 11th circuit developments on controlled substances so that they can understand the power of the categorical approach in these contexts.

-KitJ