Gavel Grab

In these other dispatches about fair and impartial courts:

• As another installment in a series, the Associated Press published an article entitled, “How to fix ‘massive crisis’ in immigration courts.”

• The Senate Judiciary Committee approved the controversial judicial nomination of law professor Goodwin Liu for the third time in a year, although his Republican critics were unforgiving about Liu’s criticisms of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, the Blog of Legal Times reported. The panel also approved the nomination of Paul Oetken for a district court judgeship in New York (see Gavel Grab for articles about Liu or Oetken).

• “‘Advice and consent’ means voting, not obstructing,” declared the headline for a Fort Worth Star-Telegram editorial about the judicial nomination of John J. McConnell of Rhode Island, and the posture of Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, regarding it.

In these other dispatches about fair and impartial courts:

• “Immigration court: Troubled system, long waits” is the headline for an Associated Press report that launches a multiple-part series.
• If the federal government shuts down due to a budget impasse in Washington, there would be no visible disruption of the federal courts for two weeks, the Blog of Legal Times quoted a federal judiciary spokesman as saying.
• The Senate Judiciary Committee is scheduled to vote Thursday on approving President Obama’s nomination of J. Paul Oetken to a district court judgeship in New York, the Washington Blade reported. If confirmed, Oetken could become the first openly gay male on the federal bench.

In these other dispatches about fair and impartial courts:

• A doomsday legal manual published in New York is intended to serve “as a guide for judges and lawyers who could face grim questions in another terrorist attack, a major radiological or chemical contamination or a widespread epidemic,” the New York Times reported.

• At the end of December, the backlog of cases pending before immigrations had climbed to a record high, said a report by Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, as reported by Fox News Latino. The backlog was  44 percent higher than levels at the end of FY 2008.

• The House of Representatives tried a second time (see Gavel Grab) and this time succeeded in passing a bill to extend key provisions of the USA Patriot Act, the nation’s central counterterrorism law, to Dec. 8. The Senate is expected to pass the House measure, according to a New York Times article.

In these other dispatches about fair and impartial courts:

• Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan wrote her first opinion, siding with a credit card company in a bankruptcy case, and as is typically the case for a freshman justice, it was not a dramatic or remarkably important case, the Los Angeles Times reported.

• Investigative articles in the Philadelphia Daily News examined the “overburdened” Philadelphia Immigration Court and the stress suffered by immigration court judges.

• Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy said the Senate would act quickly to confirm judicial nominees who were blocked at the end of 2010, according to a Washington Times article.

The Supreme Court heard oral arguments Wednesday over challenges to an Arizona statute that threatens to punish businesses if they knowingly hire illegal immigrant workers.

While the federal government generally has authority over immigration, lawyers for Arizona argued that the federal government’s failure to do its job required the state to act, according to an Associated Press article.

The Arizona law was challenged by business interests and civil liberties groups, who were supported by the Obama administration. Critics say the Arizona law amounts to a “business death penalty” and infringes on the national government, according to a McClatchy report about the case, which is entitled U.S. Chamber of Commerce v. Whiting.

“The Supreme Court offered tenuous support” for the law, reported CNN. The AP said the court appeared “likely…to sustain” the law, and Lyle Denniston wrote in SCOTUSblog of “indications that Arizona’s anti-immigration law will survive its challenge in the Court.” Read more

Regulating immigrants is “clearly within the exclusive domain of the federal government,” a federal appeals court said in ruling that Hazleton, Pa. may not enforce its crackdown on illegal immigrants.

“It is … not our job to sit in judgment of whether state and local frustration about federal immigration policy is warranted. We are, however, required to intervene when states and localities directly undermine the federal objectives embodied in statutes enacted by Congress,” wrote Chief Judge Theodore McKee of the Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, according to an Associated Press article.

Not all appeals courts have agreed whether states and municipalities may enforce laws involving immigration. The U.S. Supreme Court plans to hear debate over an Arizona law barring businesses from knowingly employing illegal immigrants.

A federal judge has received hate mail and death threats after she put the most controversial parts of Arizona’s immigration law on hold. Her decision thrust her into a national spotlight.

Federal District Judge Susan R. Bolton halted the most controversial parts of the law from taking effect (see Gavel Grab). On Thursday, Arizona asked the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to lift her order.

The U.S. Marshals Service in Phoenix said the judge got death threats as emotions ran high over the divisive ruling, and demonstrators took to the streets, according to a New York Times article.

Some messages sent to Judge Bolton by phone calls and e-mails were positive but others were “from people venting and who have expressed their displeasure in a perverted way,” the Associated Press quoted David Gonzales, the U.S. Marshal for Arizona, as saying.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a Republican, said on the Fox News program Fox & Friends that the judge was “in many ways is responsible” if “anyone in Arizona gets hurt during this intervening period,” according to Media Matters for America, a media watchdog group. Here are Gingrich’s words, as reported by Media Matters: Read more

Federal District Judge Susan Bolton (photo at right) came under withering criticism from some foes for her ruling that enjoined the most controversial sections of Arizona’s new immigration law from taking effect (see Gavel Grab).

In Human Events, Ben Shapiro assailed her as “Example No. 1A in the pantheon of judicial activism” and added:

“Not only did she decide to purposefully misread Arizona’s immigration law, she also willfully blinded herself to basic fact.  Her ruling today was utterly unhinged and untethered from reality.”

A Washington Times editorial took a similar tack, saying, “Judge Bolton’s judicial activism is out of step with the law, out of step with politics and out of step with the good of the country.”

Republican J.D. Hayworth, running against Sen. John McCain for the GOP Senate nomination, said the judge had “gutted” the law. He went on, “The vast majority of Americans and Arizonans want this law implemented and the judge’s action simply circumvents the people’s will,” CBS News reported.

An article in the Wall Street Journal, however, stated that Judge Bolton “based her findings on court precedents that support federal pre-emption of state laws found to conflict with or infringe upon federal authority.”

And although Republican Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona said yesterday he was disappointed by Judge Bolton’s ruling, she was nominated by President Bill Clinton upon Kyl’s recommendation, according to the ThinkProgress blog. Kyl reportedly testified about her “expertise and fairness.”

Superior Court Judge Bethany Hicks told the Arizona Republic about Judge Bolton, “Everything she does is impeccable.” Judge Hicks said,  “That’s kind of her nickname. We call her ‘Impeccable’ because that’s how she is,” according to a CBS News blog post.

A federal judge has enjoined the most controversial sections of Arizona’s new immigration law from taking effect.

With the law scheduled to take effect Thursday, Judge Susan Bolton put on hold sections of it that call for police to check an individual’s immigration status while enforcing other laws and that require immigrants to carry their legal papers all of the time, according to a New York Times article.

“Preserving the status quo through a preliminary injunction is less harmful than allowing state laws that are likely pre-empted by federal law to be enforced,” Judge Bolton said. Her opinion is available here (with thanks to The Blog of Legal Times). The judge added:

“There is a substantial likelihood that officers will wrongfully arrest legal resident aliens. By enforcing this statute, Arizona would impose a ‘distinct, unusual and extraordinary’ burden on legal resident aliens that only the federal government has the authority to impose.” Read more

Just how clogged are the nation’s immigration courts? They face “the largest backlog of pending deportation and asylum cases in history,” the Houston Chronicle reports in an article drawing heavily on new information from a Syracuse University-based data research institute.

The backlog of cases nationwide reached an all time high of 228,421 in the first months of fiscal 2010, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), up 82 percent from a decade ago.

Immigrants’ wait for action has been pushed to an average of 439 days, with extremes for pending cases of an average 713 days in Los Angeles and 612 days in Boston immigration courts. Some other immigration courts are at the other end of the spectrum, however, with average waits of 75 days in Florence, Arizona and 82 days in Miami.

TRAC said the failure of the Bush and Obama administrations to fill judicial vacancies on the immigration courts was key to the increasing backlogs, and that one of six judicial positions is vacant.

A related article in Harvard Law Record gives an immigration attorney’s first-person account of delays in the immigration courts and is headlined, “U.S. Funds immigration cops, not courts: The justice system is too focused on punishing immigrants, rather than protecting their rights.”

Members of the American Bar Association recently voted in support of the idea of creating a new, independent immigration court system to replace the one that now is a part of the U.S. Justice Department. You can learn more by clicking on Gavel Grab.