An Ideological Scramble on Immigration at the Supreme Court

lovemode · lovemode

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Just when you think you know what the liberals and conservatives on the Supreme Court stand for, along comes a case like United States v. Texas—the challenge to President Barack Obama’s executive orders allowing more than four million undocumented immigrants to remain in the United States.

Shortly after the 2014 midterm elections, President Obama issued a series of orders that affected those people who had violated immigration laws to come to the United States and had also, since their immigration, become the parents of citizens or of lawful U.S. residents. The orders would allow them to file for certification from the government that would exempt them from deportation and could allow them to work legally in the United States. (I wrote about the program, known as Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents, or DAPA, for The New Yorker in July.) Shortly after the President’s action, Texas and about two dozen other states challenged his authority to take these steps, and a district judge in Brownsville voided Obama’s new rules across the United States. In May, a divided panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirmed the lower court’s order.

In this respect, the Court’s decision today to hear the case was a victory for the President. If the Court had put off its decision for even another week or two, the clock might have run out on this year’s Supreme Court term, and the President would have left office next year with his immigration plan still on hold. Now, at least, the President has a chance to win the case in front of the Supreme Court by June and implement his plan in the remaining months of his Administration.

But will Obama win? Here the case scrambles some of the usual ideological positions. The Administration has claimed from the beginning that Texas and the other states lack the right to challenge the executive action at all—what’s known legally as “standing.” Generally, only parties who have been directly harmed can go to court and seek relief. The President’s orders apply to individuals, not states, so the President’s lawyers assert that the plaintiffs lack standing to bring their case. But it’s usually liberals who argue for a broad definition of standing under the Constitution. Conservatives are the ones who are usually trying to close the courtroom doors to plaintiffs who have complaints about government action. Both as judges and as advocates, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Antonin Scalia have been vigorous supporters of narrowing standing doctrine.

If the Court finds that Texas and the other states have standing, the Justices will then turn to the main issue in the case—whether President Obama exceeded his constitutional power by ordering the immigration reforms without the approval of Congress. The question of executive authority has also split the Justices along ideological lines, but with unpredictable implications for the current case. Throughout the Bush Administration, for example, the conservative Justices argued, in cases brought on behalf of detainees held in Guantánamo Bay, that the President’s authority in foreign policy was broad. As Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in his dissenting opinion in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, the majority opinion “openly flouts our well-established duty to respect the Executive’s judgment in matters of military operations and foreign affairs.” Regulation of immigration and borders is, of course, a core responsibility of the executive under our system of separation of powers. It will be interesting to see if Thomas and his conservative colleagues are as solicitous of President Obama’s claims as they were of President George W. Bush’s. Likewise, we will see whether the liberals who slapped down Bush on Guantánamo apply the same reasoning to Obama’s claims on immigration.

There are, without a doubt, significant differences between the issues. The Court’s precedents on both standing and executive power invariably turn on the facts of individual cases. But there is no question about the general drift of the ideological positions in both areas. Nor is it disputable, as a general matter, that in this case the conservative positions favor Obama and the liberal outlooks support the Texas plaintiffs. If the Court splits along its customary ideological lines—the conservatives against Obama, the liberals for him—the case may serve as another illustration that politics, rather than precedent, is the real currency of the Supreme Court.

http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-...-supreme-court

drvenom · drvenom

We'll know more in April. I think that is when the justices will get to ask their questions to both sides. That should reveal more about where they stand in regards to the case. I wish they would stop this political game and just let us get our papeles. Man, if I can get dacafied, my life will forever be different.

DACA-IR-DA · DACA-IR-DA

DACA 2012 was a political move. Politics is a game. None of them care about us.

Demise · Demise

Quote:

Originally Posted by DACA-IR-DA

DACA 2012 was a political move. Politics is a game. None of them care about us.

Took you this long to realize it?

DACA-IR-DA · DACA-IR-DA

Quote:

Originally Posted by Demise

Took you this long to realize it?

LOL. I knew it from day 1.

kennytlog · kennytlog

Quote:

Originally Posted by drvenom

We'll know more in April. I think that is when the justices will get to ask their questions to both sides. That should reveal more about where they stand in regards to the case. I wish they would stop this political game and just let us get our papeles. Man, if I can get dacafied, my life will forever be different.

I wish it is sooner than April.

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An Ideological Scramble on Immigration at the Supreme Court