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The Invention of Immigration Exceptionalism

Everyone believes that immigration law has been exceptional since its late nineteenth-century birth—insulated from judicial review by the Court’s creation of the “plenary power doctrine.” But early immigration law was actually ordinary public law. Recovering this reality has profound implications fo…

Feature

The Adjudicative State

This Feature identifies a foundational problem in modern administrative law. It argues that the Supreme Court’s dual commitments to unitary executive theory and separation-of-powers literalism are in deep conflict when it comes to agency courts. Recognizing this conflict advances debates about how t…

Article

The President and Immigration Law Redux

In November 2014, President Obama announced his intention to dramatically reshape immigration law through administrative channels. Together with relief policies announced in 2012, his initiatives would shield nearly half the population of unauthorized immigrants from removal and en…

Article

The President and Immigration Law

119 Yale L.J. 458 (2009). 

The plenary power doctrine sharply limits the judiciary’s power to police immigration regulation—a fact that has preoccupied immigration law scholars for decades. But scholars’ persistent focus on the distribution of power between the courts and the political branches has…