Immigration Law

POSNER BLASTS IMMIGRATION COURTS

By Greg Siskind

Seventh Circuit Judge Richard Posner, one of the country's most influential jurists (and a professor at my alma mater, the University of Chicago Law School) has some tough words for the state of the nation's immigration courts. The National Law Journal reports

Federal judge Richard Posner, one of the most widely cited appellate judges in the United States, blasted the nation's asylum adjudication system as "inadequate" and offered a number of remedies for it in a speech Monday.

Posner, who sits on the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, said administrative law judges who serve in the immigration courts are ill-trained and insufficient in number. He also said the bar that represents applicants doesn't have enough qualified lawyers, and that the Board of Immigration Appeals, which has 11 members, is too small. In recent years, Posner has offered glimpses of his dissatisfaction in opinions from the bench as well.

"This is a system of adjudication that is clearly inadequate," Posner said.

Full post as published by Greg Siskind's Blog on April 22, 2008 (boomark / email).