Judicial Behavior at the Intersections of Immigration, Race, and Law Enforcement

• In Event: Race, Judging, and the Courts

Abstract

How do the intersections of judge characteristics impact judicial behavior? I study the intersection of immigration with race and law enforcement. When the law invites a connection between judge idnenties and a legal quetion before a judge, identities can affect judicial behavior. When judges lack the opportunities to make these connections, the relationship between the law and an identity may be broken. I argue that these effects are heightened for particularly vulnerable subsets of minority groups. I set my study in the context of the immigration courts, where judges with immigration backgrounds should make more permissive decisions towards immigrants. However, immigration judges lack the independence of other federal courts. Judges in this context may instead be more restrictive towards immigrants as they attempt to conform to the hierarchical pressures of their job. I create a new dataset on judge backgrounds and study judicial behavior in removal hearings. I expect judges to have less discretion during their probationary periods, when they can be fired at will. I find that judges with immigrant backgrounds who either identify as nonwhite or who come from an immigration advocacy background are particularly more pressured to grant removal than are judges who are white immigrants or immigrants who had law enforcement experience. My paper highlights how immigrant identities can affect judicial behavior, underscores the complexity of identities and judicial behavior, and provides scholars of judicial and bureaucratic politics more context on an understudied setting.

Author

• Sara J. Heridia, Emory University