Adam B. Cox
The Invention of Immigration Exceptionalism
Everyone believes that immigration law has been exceptional since its late nineteenth-century birth—insulated from judicial review by the Court’s creation of the “plenary power doctrine.” But early immigration law was actually ordinary public law. Recovering this reality has profound implications for scholars of immigration and public law alike.
The Adjudicative State
This Feature identifies a foundational problem in modern administrative law. It argues that the Supreme Court’s dual commitments to unitary executive theory and separation-of-powers literalism are in deep conflict when it comes to agency courts. Recognizing this conflict advances debates about how the Roberts Court is transforming the administrative state.
The President and Immigration Law
119 Yale L.J. 458 (2009). The plenary power doctrine sharply limits the judiciary’s power to police immigration regulation—a fact that has preoccupied immigration law scholars for decades. But scholars’ persistent focus on the distribution of power between the courts and the political branches has obscured a second important separation-of-powers question: how is immigration authority distributed between the political branches themselves?...