ABA Journal

North America

451 ABA Journal North America articles.

From Undocumented to Attorney at Law: A journey of hope and resilience

There was room for only two of us on our tiny raft, yet three of my siblings and I managed to cling onto its surface as my father waded through the Rio Grande, pulling the raft behind him. In front of us was the promised land: America. It promised an education and a better life.

9th Circuit rejects claim that illegal reentry law violated defendant’s right to equal protection

A federal appeals court on Monday rejected a defendant’s claim that his Fifth Amendment equal protection rights were violated by a law making it a crime to reenter the United States after deportation.

Gorsuch’s Title 42 statement is ‘a remarkable jeremiad against COVID mitigation policies,’ law prof says

Justice Neil Gorsuch issued a lengthy statement criticizing “rule by indefinite emergency edict” Thursday, when the U.S. Supreme Court issued an order related to a COVID-19-pandemic-era immigration policy.

How lawyers can embrace their inner ‘chicken’

"Chicken?" Why not? I would like to talk about a subject many of us in the legal profession are afraid to discuss: fear. As lawyers, our work can be stressful, leaving us gripped with fear. This must be a relevant issue, as with my glance at a thesaurus, I note that there are at least three synonyms for fear beginning with the just letter “a” alone—namely “anxiety,” “alarm” and “angst.”

Asylum-seekers entering US illegally would be subject to rebuttable presumption under Biden border proposal

President Joe Biden announced a new border policy Thursday that will admit up to 30,000 migrants per month from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela.

Weekly Briefs: Biden can’t grant student-debt relief, judge says; $32.3M malpractice award left in place

Judge strikes down student-debt relief

U.S. District Judge Mark Pittman of Fort Worth, Texas, ruled Thursday that the Biden administration’s plan to forgive some federal student-loan debt was an unconstitutional…

Weekly Briefs: Judge tosses challenge to ‘Don’t Say Gay’ law; gun-makers win dismissal of Mexico suit

Challenge to Florida’s ‘Don’t Say Gay’ law gets tossed

A federal judge in Tallahassee, Florida, has tossed a challenge to Florida’s Parental Rights in Education law, which critics have…

Biden administration ends ‘Remain in Mexico’ policy waits for asylum-seekers after judge lifts injunction

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is ending a Trump administration policy that required asylum-seekers entering at the southern border to wait in Mexico while their cases are pending.

Supreme Court allows Biden to end remain-in-Mexico policy; chief justice’s opinion joined by Kavanaugh, liberal justices

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled for the Biden administration on Thursday when it allowed repeal of the remain-in-Mexico policy for asylum-seekers.

Supreme Court backlog is the largest in percentage terms since at least 1950

More than half of the cases on the U.S. Supreme Court’s docket have yet to be decided.  As of Friday, the court had 33 opinions remaining, which amounts to 53% of its argued cases this term.

Work for Canadian residential school survivors informs lawyer’s debut novel

A lawyer explains how her work informed the writing of her book and why many Indigenous people still feel the impact of the Canadian school system to this day.

Canadian law school mistakenly informed student’s family that she had died

A Canadian law school’s unusual apology to one of its law students has gone viral after it was posted to Twitter last week.

US can’t use health law to expel migrants to areas where they face persecution or torture, DC Circuit says

A federal appeals court ruled Friday that the Biden administration can’t use a public health law to immediately expel migrants to countries where they could face persecution or torture.

Supreme Court will consider Biden’s bid to end remain-in-Mexico policy for asylum-seekers

The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday agreed to decide whether the Biden administration may end former President Donald Trump’s policy requiring asylum-seekers to remain in Mexico while their cases are pending.

Racial and ethnic justice cases reveal ideological rift in the courts

In December, the Trump-era “Remain in Mexico” program resumed under President Joe Biden's administration. The immigration policy, formally known as the Migrant Protection Protocols, requires the U.S. government to return certain asylum-seekers to Mexico pending the adjudication of their immigration cases in American courts.

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