Lessons for Law School Deans Regarding Catholics in Political Life

Let me again extend my appreciation to Deans Kearney and O’Hear for the opportunity to serve as December’s guest alumnus blogger of the month, and to all of you who joined the conversation in the comments section. I’ll be right there with you starting tomorrow. 🙂 Let me also take advantage of my month’s unique position on the calendar to wish you all a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

My final post is, in fact, the abstract of a piece I have just posted to SSRN. Earlier this year, you may have seen that Fordham’s law school received some heat from Edward Cardinal Egan, Archbishop of New York, for its decision to confer an award on pro-abortion Justice Stephen Breyer.  The story led me to do some investigating, drawing in part on my own experiences as a Marquette student, and voila, an essay emerged. I hope to begin shopping it around to law reviews in the spring submission season.

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Should Immigration Service Employees Be “Looking for a Way to Approve” Petitions and Applications?

The answer is a resounding yes, according to this refreshingly outdated 1980 memo from INS Regional Director Durward E. Powell, Jr., regarding “Dispensing of Information and Adjudications Decision Making.”   

Powell admonishes employees that they should not consider themselves “guardians of the treasury of information on Immigration benefits, whose function is to dispense reluctantly that narrow portion of the treasury which relates to a specific inquiry.  Rather, all of us are, or should be, dispensers of total information, tailored to the entirety of each applicant’s situation. Tell them freely and openly not only what they are not eligible for but what they may be eligible for.”  

What an efficient and productive attitude for any agency employee toward her work. Some of the immigration agency employees I have encountered did seem to take this helpful stance, but others did not.  In fact, the same could be said about my encounters with DMV employees.

What are your thoughts? 

Thanks to Benders Immigration Bulletin Daily for the delightful link.

(Edit at 10:42 a.m.) As indicated in the comments below, Benders found this memo on the Nation of Immigrators blog.  The post, “New Year Resolutions for Immigration Officials,” is thoughtful and probably would interest anyone who is interested enough to be reading what I’ve written here.

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Iranian Human Rights Lawyer Shirin Ebadi’s Private Offices Raided

You may be interested to know that the Iranian government’s harassment of Shirin Ebadi continues.   As I posted about last week, the offices of a human rights organization she leads were recently raided and shut down.  Now authorities have raided her private offices, asserting that they are conducting a tax-investigation.  Dr. Ebadi “told CNN last week that she had the proper licenses to practice law and had stamps showing she was up to date on her taxes.”

From the CNN report:

Last week’s raids shut Ebadi’s Center for the Defense of Human Rights and another charity that aids land mine victims. A spokesman for Iran’s Foreign Ministry told the state news agency IRNA that the organizations did not have legal work permits.

“There is now grave danger to both Dr. Ebadi, who fears an imminent arrest, and to her many human rights clients, whose basic human rights and lawyer/client privileges have been compromised by this seizure of their confidential files,” Williams wrote. “Dr. Ebadi is deeply concerned that the lives of many dozens of people are now in jeopardy as a result of yesterday’s illegal raid.”

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