Immigration Law and the Principle of Plenary Congressional Power

Legomsky, Stephen H.

doi:10.1086/scr.1984.3536942

Cited by 17 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…If the court was to maintain an extraconstitutional doctrine of federal sovereignty in migration politics against constitutional challenges, it had to devise a strategy for circumventing, avoiding, or ignoring the paradox. 70 This is a hazardous strategy for any court. At many points, it simply asserted the nonjusticiability of cases to avoid addressing the paradox.…”

Section: Toward Sanctuary: Twentieth-century Plenary Powers Constitumentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The avoidance strategy of the court has shaped the tactics of anti-and pro-immigrant forces. 71 I will address the development of anti-immigration migration politics; but as they are best understood as reactions to pro-immigrant successes, I will start there. From the outset, the federal government's claim to unchecked sovereign power in questions of migration was challenged, first in dissenting opinions, such as those of justices Brewer and Fuller in Fong Yue Ting, and more substantively in Yamataya v. Fisher (1903).…”

Section: Toward Sanctuary: Twentieth-century Plenary Powers Constitumentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Sanctuary Cities and Republican Liberty

Hoye

2019

Politics & Society

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

What are sanctuary cities? What are the political stakes? The literature provides inadequate answers. Liberal migration theorists offer few insights into sanctuary city politics. Critical migration scholars primarily address the relationship between sanctuary cities and political activism, a small part of the phenomenon. The historical literature examines continuities between 1970s sanctuary church activism and contemporary sanctuary cities, confusing what is essential to sanctuary churches and what is only sometimes associated with sanctuary cities. Together these approaches obscure more than they reveal. This article suggests a republican account of sanctuary cities. Reconstructing American migration politics from the colonial era onward shows that sanctuary cities have roots in both the colonial republican revolt and the republican principle of freedom as nondomination. That reconstruction reveals much about both sanctuary cities and the federal government’s long-running assault on them. The resulting robust analytical framework clarifies what is at stake in the politics of sanctuary cities: federal sovereignty in migration politics specifically and republican liberty in migration politics generally.

show abstract

Section: Toward Sanctuary: Twentieth-century Plenary Powers Constitumentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Toward Sanctuary: Twentieth-century Plenary Powers Constitumentioning

confidence: 99%

Sanctuary Cities and Republican Liberty

Hoye

2019

Politics & Society

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Statism, nationalism, birthright citizenship, and various ascriptive claims could coalesce behind an absolute political/philosophical claim of federal sovereignty with an enduring rhetorical and legal force. The illiberal racism of Chae Chan Ping was nullified later, but the plenary powers asserted by the federal government have never been challenged, and remain to this day a bedrock for anti-immigration politics (Cleveland, 2002;Legomsky, 1984;Motomura, 1990). The new colossus now had to contend with the old leviathan.…”

Section: A Genealogy Of the Insurgent Republican Critique Of Migratiomentioning

confidence: 99%

Migration, membership, and republican liberty

Hoye

2018

Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosoph

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Neorepublicanism holds that domination is the foremost political evil. More, it claims to be able to address today's most pressing issues. It follows that neorepublicanism should, then, speak to questions of migration, membership, and domination. However, this is not the case. Some critical voices inspired by the idea of nondomination arrive at interesting critiques of migration, membership, and domination, but their answers are often partial and in some ways problematic. They are also largely ahistorical. The contemporary paucity of neorepublican reflections on migration contrasts sharply with its centrality in republican history. In the US, from the colonial period until late into the 19th century, some republicans understood the domination of migrants and citizens as conjoined concerns. They developed a robust account of the relationship between domestic domination and exclusionary migration regimes. They conceptualized the republic as a global asylum where membership is based on volitional allegiance, and they vigorously defended the right of aliens to expatriate. Those ideas were ultimately defeated by aristocratic, oligarchic, and statist forces. This article explicates that history through a genealogical account of what I call 'insurgent republicanism'. The article then returns to contemporary theorization to diagnose its limitations, continuities, and potentials as seen from the perspective of the insurgent republican tradition.

show abstract

“…While not necessarily denying the role of institutions or all legal precedents ( e.g. , the plenary power doctrine in immigration law: Legomsky, 1984; Schuck, 1984; Motomura, 1990), most of today’s quantitatively oriented social scientists who study the courts have adopted Legal Realism, believing that a judge primarily decides cases according to his or her personal policy preferences (the “attitudinal model”; e.g. , Segal and Cover, 1989; George and Epstein, 1992; Sheehan, Mishler, and Songer, 1992; Segal and Spaeth, 1993, 2002; Segal et al.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Causes of Pro-Immigration Voting in the United States Supreme Court

Ocepek

Fetzer

2010

International Migration Review

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

During the pre‐confirmation debate over Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, critics accused her of allowing her background to influence her judicial decisions. This article assesses the validity of such a claim for all sitting justices from 1875 to 2007 in one relevant policy area, immigration. In this article, we look at all 185 immigration‐related decisions by the Supreme Court from its creation through 2007. Logistic general estimating equation regression analysis of Supreme Court voting on these cases suggests that justices who were nominated by Democratic presidents, who were urbanites, and who had previous judicial experience were more likely to vote in favor of immigration. However, justices who grew up in the Southwest, had Southern European ancestors, or were ideological conservatives were more hostile to immigration. Although public opinion, the unemployment rate, and the percent foreign‐born in a given year did not affect justices’ votes, non‐asylum cases and appeals from the Eighth Circuit were more likely to receive favorable treatment. The mean level of racial liberalism of the Senators in office during a particular justice’s confirmation hearings likewise had a large impact on his or her subsequent rulings. These findings suggest that Supreme Court voting on immigration is substantially influenced by justices’ background and political preferences as well as by some political and legal structures. These results thus support Legal Realism and New Institutionalism instead of the Traditional Legal Model of Supreme Court behavior.

show abstract

Immigration Law and the Principle of Plenary Congressional Power

Cited by 17 publications

References 0 publications

Sanctuary Cities and Republican Liberty

Sanctuary Cities and Republican Liberty

Migration, membership, and republican liberty

The Causes of Pro-Immigration Voting in the United States Supreme Court

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About