The Immigration Battle in American Courts. By Anna O. Law. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010. 266 pp. $90.00 cloth.

Abstract

The Immigration Battle in American Courts. By Anna O. Law. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010. 266 pp. $90.00 cloth. In The Immigration Battle in American Courts, Anna O. Law uses immigration law as a case study to provide a compelling analysis of the different developmental paths of the two highest U.S. federal courtsFthe Courts of Appeals (the Third, Fifth, and Ninth Circuits) and the Supreme Court, for an impressive array of years: 1881 to 2002. Law, interested in institutional changes that occurred in these courts, utilizes a mixed-method analysis that yields three core arguments. First, the Supreme Court and Courts of Appeals operate in different institutional contexts; each court's unique context acts as a filtering mechanism that shapes the judges' perception of what they should be doing and how they should be doing it. Second, the contexts of both courts have slowly changed over time; as such, neither the Supreme Court nor the Courts of Appeals have played a static role in the federal judicial system. Third, the changing institutional settings of the courts have consequences for the courts themselves, for the occupants of those institutions, and in the case of immigration law, for the immigrants who appear before the courts. While the overarching theme of this study is institutional change, the book presents a strong and nuanced analysis of the institutional context for the creation of immigration law. Chapter 2 examines the immigration bureaucracy, from the Board of Immigration Appeals to the federal courts. Law analyzes the anti-immigrant reputation of the Supreme Court, arguing that it has gained this reputation largely because it has ceded power over immigration to Congress and the executive branch. Because the Supreme Court has the power to control its own docket, it is able to decide which immigration cases to review; at the same time, the Courts of Appeals must adjudicate all of the immigration cases that are appealed to them. The number of these cases, as Chapter 3 shows, has increased significantly, and, as Law convincingly argues, ''the confluence of congressional legislation first creating the structures and rules of the federal judicial system, the decision of immigrants to defend challenges to their immigration status, and the rise of immigration enforcement beginning in 1986 had the combined effect of further distancing and distinguishing the U.S. Supreme Court and the U.S. Courts of Appeals in their functions'' (p. 83). Because the Supreme Court grants certiorari to so few cases, the Courts of Appeals have taken on the brunt of immigration cases. Law quantifies this: Between 1881 and 2002, the Supreme Court decided 200 immigration cases, whereas the 11 Courts of Appeals decided 12,371 immigration cases combined (pp. 114, 115). The fact that the Courts of Appeals are more likely to be the last decision making body to address immigration cases suggests, as Law shows in Chapter 4, that these judges' preferred interpretations of statutes will stand (p. …