Contesting Immigration Policy in Court: Legal Activism and its Radiating Effects in the United States and France

by Leila Kawar

Overview

What difference does law make in immigration policymaking? Since the 1970s, networks of progressive attorneys in both the US and France have attempted to use litigation to assert rights for non-citizens. Yet judicial engagement - while numerically voluminous - remains doctrinally curtailed. This study offers new insights into the constitutive role of law in immigration policymaking by focusing on the legal frames, narratives, and performances forged through action in court. Challenging the conventional wisdom that 'cause litigation' has little long-term impact on policymaking unless it produces broad rights-protective principles, this book shows that legal contestation can have important radiating effects on policy by reshaping how political actors approach immigration issues. Based on extensive fieldwork in the United States and France, this book explores the paths by which litigation has effected policy change in two paradigmatically different national contexts.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781316288856
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	06/25/2015
Series:	Cambridge Studies in Law and Society
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Leila Kawar is an assistant professor in the Legal Studies Program of the Department of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Her research, which has been funded by the National Science Foundation and the Council for European Studies, focuses on the intersection of legal activity with migration and citizenship. She is active in the Law and Society Association, where she served for four years as coordinator for the Citizenship and Immigration Collaborative Research Network. She is a cofounder of the Migration and Citizenship Section of the American Political Science Association.

Table of Contents

1. What difference does law make in immigration policymaking?; 2. A new area of legal practice; 3. Formalization of immigrant rights; 4. Institutionalizing legal innovation; 5. Enacting adversarial legalism through class action lawsuits; 6. Performing legality before the Conseil d'Etat; 7. Conclusion: legal activism and its radiating effects.

Editorial Reviews

"Dr Kawar analyzes high-profile immigrant-rights cases in France and the United States, arguing persuasively that legal advocacy subtly transforms political debate, administrative practice, and cultural beliefs by assembling and publicizing meanings that become public currency. Her insightful re-framing offers a fresh and positive approach to the study of litigation's impact on public policy."
Doris Marie Provine, Professor Emerita of the School of Social Transformation, Arizona State University

"Artfully interweaving sociolegal studies and comparative law, Leila Kawar offers a novel and immensely insightful analysis of the politics of immigrant rights legal activism … a truly important and unusually elegant work."
Mitchel Lasser, author of Judicial Transformations: The Rights Revolution in the Courts of Europe

"Leila Kawar has written a fascinating and nuanced account of the evolution of immigrants' rights mobilizations in the United States and France. However, Contesting Immigration Policy in Court is far more. A pathbreaking comparative study grounded in meticulous research, it offers rich lessons on the complex webs linking legal doctrine, lawyer advocacy, and movements for social change."
Hiroshi Motomura, Susan Westerberg Prager Professor of Law, University of California, Los Angeles and author of Immigration Outside the Law

"Leila Kawar's well researched and clearly written study convincingly demonstrates how legal rights activists generated a variety of important impacts on immigration policy-making in both France and the United States over several decades. Contesting Immigration Policy in Court is an important book for all scholars interested in legal activism, the politics of rights, and social change."
Michael McCann, Gordon Hirabayashi Professor, University of Washington, DC

From the Publisher