A Quick Lesson on Circuit Courts

Today, I'm going to write about circuit courts -- because I'm a nerd and because I'm waiting for the boss' schedule to open up so I can harass him about a motion I finished two days ago that needs his approval.

First of all, a little background on the way things work: if you're an immigrant and you're getting deported, you don't go to court immediately. Granted, they *call* it court, the "judge" dresses up in "robes,"and all kind of legal mumbo jumbo goes down. But it's not court. Really, it's a no-rules, no-holds-barred, everything goes administrative proceeding, kind of like Survivor: The Department of Justice but not really.

Once everything goes down, if you or the government doesn't like what the immigration judge says, either of you can appeal to aptly-named Board of Immigration Appeals, also a part of DoJ. Then, if you don't like what the BIA has to say (and most immigrants don't), you appeal at the appellate level and go to real court at the circuit level.

The circuit courts are the ones that decide what lobbyists Congress *actually* meant when it passed a law. Each circuit is its own special little snowflake when it comes to interpreting law. There are 13 of them, and each one has a unique personality. Here's a map to give you a better idea of how things are divided up:

13 Special Little Gerrymandered Snowflakes!!!

You have to take these personalities into account when you pick cases to cite in your arguments. For instance, although the Supreme Court usually agrees with the 9th Circuit's logic, you have to take what that circuit says with a grain of salt because the judges there are a bunch of bong-toting hippies from the Northern Marianas Islands who believe in things like human dignity and we don't need a buncha damn Californians telling us how to do things in TEXXX-USS. Also, here in Texas, our circuit hates one of the other circuits. I can never remember which one, but we're not supposed to cite from it. I think they slept with our girlfriend in high school or something.

Anyways, ideally if you are an immigration lawyer in Texas, you want to cite cases from the 5th Circuit (THE FIGHTIN' FIFTH!!!!) which includes us, Louisiana, and Mississippi, for some reason. It's hard to find groundbreaking cases that will exonerate your client from the 5th Circuit because the judges tend to not like to think too hard about complicated things be more conservative. A lot of times they will affirm a lower court's ruling and pass the case onto the Supreme Court so those dudes and dudettes can try to make some sense out of the hot ghetto messes.

Right. So where was I going with this? I honestly can't remember. All I know is that my boss wants me to have an Erin Brockovitch moment and none of the circuits are helping me. If I could just find a case where some activist judge (probably in the 9th Circuit) interprets "illegal immigrants" to mean "penguins," that would really help me out.

But it would also make me sad, because then we'd have to deport millions of penguins. And I like penguins.

/nerdiness