Our immigration laws are administered by federal agencies. Even the immigration courts are really just an office within the Department of Justice.

In Administrative Law this week, we’re talking about cases in which jurisprudential conservatives have successfully attacked federal agency adjudication on various separation-of-powers theories. On Monday, we’ll discuss cases where the Supreme Court has held that agency adjudications by Administrative Law Judges violated the Appointments Clause of the Constitution.

This week, Senate Republicans announced a bill to reform immigration, including the asylum claims process. One proposal jumped out at me: They propose to make the decisions of asylum officers final, meaning they could no longer be reviewed by an immigration judge in a removal proceeding.

This has many problems, but one arises directly from the conservative litigation attack on agency adjudication: Making a GS-9 asylum officer’s decision “final” would very likely violate the Appointments Clause.

This week from How We Got Here, on Substack.

https://alisonpeck.substack.com/p/senate-republicans-reform-proposal