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SCOTUS Asks: What Due Process Is Required in Immigration Hearings?
This past week in Jennings v. Rodriguez, the Supreme Court of the United States waded into an immigration thicket from which there is no easy escape. It is commonplace that many aliens in the United States are subject to deportation for a variety of reasons. Some of these aliens must be detained in the US because they are stateless or because the US does not have a repatriation treaty with their home country. Other persons are detained because they are subject to a criminal record.
In many cases the detentions are extended as aliens play for time in order to obtain evidence to bolster their case for remaining in the US. In a large percentage of cases, the detentions can easily be justified on the grounds that the aliens in question are a flight risk or pose a risk for public safety. In individual cases, it is often hard to know which individuals fall into which categories, so that it is sometimes incumbent to hold individuals in custody for long periods of time until the needed factual records can be assembled.
At some point, the detention of any person runs into challenges under the Due Process Clause to the Fifth Amendment, which imposes some limitation on indefinite detention prior to the resolution of a case. Under current rules, roughly speaking, all persons are entitled by statute to a hearing upon their initial detention and are offered an additional one in the event of material changes in circumstances.
More than a few eyebrows have been raised recently about the conspicuous entry of another distinguished voice into the maelstrom of the current presidential race. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has taken up herself in a 
I haven’t had time to read the 
The Supreme Court 
In these turbulent times, it is quite amazing how rapidly the fortunes of the political wars can shift, especially on matters of labor law. Earlier this year, the question before the United States Supreme Court in 
Most political podcasts with which I am familiar have a well-defined perspective, be it right, left, libertarian, socialist, or whatever. The hosts, the guests, the thoughts, and most of all the audiences hew closely toward some ideological mean about which controversy may take place so long as it does not go beyond the locally prescribed bounds of decency. Our political culture is such that (in podcasts, anyway) the unifying feature of discourse is the existence of the “other”: the ideological enemy which lies far outside of the conflicts we have among ourselves.
As noted in yesterday’s The Daily Shot, the Supreme Court finally ruled in the case of 
The single most important phrase that changed the politics of Supreme Court nominations was Senator Edward Kennedy’s famous and shameful denunciation of “Robert Bork’s America,” with its back alley abortions, segregated lunch counters, and rogue police. From that point on, Supreme Court nominees of either party, and even potential nominees, have risked being attacked in a similar manner. The nomination process of Clarence Thomas was, of course, quite ugly—and there were major tussles during the deliberations over John Roberts and Samuel Alito (who then Senator Obama wanted to filibuster). Now, the Republican opposition is coalescing against Judge Merrick Garland, the Chief Judge of the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, who at age 63 is Barack Obama’s nominee to the Supreme Court.