Washington Post (Opinion)
By Ilya Somin
May 21, 2015
In
a guest post at the American Constitution Society Blog, I explain how
the constitutionality of President Obama’s controversial immigration
policy can be defended based
on theories generally associated with the rival Federalist Society (of
which I am a longtime member):
The
Obama administration’s immigration policy deferring deportation for
more than four million illegal immigrants has been the focus of
extensive constitutional debate
since it was announced last fall….
Ironically,
the case for it is particularly strong if we accept two principles that
many of the policy’s conservative critics strongly support in other
contexts: the unitary
executive and limiting the scope of congressional power as close as
possible to its original meaning. At the same time, the Obama policy
highlights the dangers posed by executive discretion in a world where
there is far more federal law than any administration
can effectively enforce.
I
discussed some of the constitutional issues raised by Obama’s policy in
greater detail in this December article. MY ACS Blog post also builds
on this 2013 post, in which
I explained why Congress does not have a general power to forbid
immigration under the original meaning of Article I of the Constitution
(though, obviously, such a power has been granted by nonoriginalist
Supreme Court decisions, and may be justifiable under
some versions of “living” Constitution theory).
While
I don’t agree with ACS on all that many issues, I believe they make a
valuable contribution to legal debates, and I am grateful for the
opportunity to do a guest
post on their site. I also have had good experiences speaking on
ACS-sponsored conferences and panels on various issues (including ones
where I advocated very different positions from those held by most ACS
members).
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
No comments:
Post a Comment