Why Immigration’s Plenary Power Doctrine Endures

Oklahoma Law Review Oklahoma Law Review

Volume 68 | Number 1

Symposium: Chae Chan Ping v. United States: 125 Years of Immigration’s Plenary Power

Doctrine

2015

Why Immigration’s Plenary Power Doctrine Endures Why Immigration’s Plenary Power Doctrine Endures

David A. Martin

University of Virginia

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Recommended Citation Recommended Citation

David A. Martin,

Why Immigration’s Plenary Power Doctrine Endures

, 68 OKLA. L. REV. 29 (2015)

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WHY IMMIGRATION’S PLENARY POWER

DOCTRINE ENDURES

DAVID A. MARTIN

Abstract

The plenary power doctrine, traditionally traced to the Supreme Court’s

decision in Chae Chan Ping, has persisted despite a steady and vigorous

stream of scholarly criticism. This essay undertakes to explain why. First,

the Court’s strong deference to the political branches does not derive from

the concept of sovereignty. Justice Field’s opinion for the Court invoked

sovereignty not to trump rights claims but to solve a federalism problem —

structural reasoning that locates the immigration control power squarely in

the federal government, though not explicitly enumerated in the

Constitution. The Chae Chan Ping Court’s deference to the political

branches instead rested primarily on the close linkage between foreign

affairs and immigration control decisions. The essay illustrates why such

linkage is more significant than is often appreciated, even today, as the

federal government seeks to work in a complex and uncertain global

context, where many powers taken for granted in the domestic arena simply

are not reliably available. The Court implicitly remains willing to give the

political branches leeway to use immigration authorities in rough-hewn

ways, even though deference does mean that some governmental acts

deriving from illicit motives rather than genuine foreign affairs

considerations may go unremedied in court. The Court adheres to a strong

deference doctrine because it is concerned that lower courts, if given wider

authority to review, will overvalue individual interests and undervalue

governmental interests. In an increasingly dangerous world, the Supreme

Court is unlikely to overrule the plenary power doctrine. Academics and

activists should respond by focusing more attention on rigorous policy

analysis coupled with advocacy addressed to the political branches — a

forum where constitutional values can be pursued and successfully, though

unevenly, vindicated, as Justice Field recognized.

* Warner-Booker Distinguished Professor of International Law and Joel B. Piassick

Research Professor, University of Virginia. The author served, during leave from his

university position, as General Counsel of the Immigration and Naturalization Service from

1995 to 1998 and as Principal Deputy General Counsel of the Department of Homeland

Security from 2009 through 2010. The views expressed herein are his alone and do not

necessarily represent the views of his former agencies or the U.S. government. Warm

thanks go to Sarah Allen for excellent research assistance.

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30 OKLAHOMA LAW REVIEW [Vol. 68:29

Chae Chan Ping v. United States,

also known as The Chinese Exclusion

Case, is traditionally taken as the fountainhead of the plenary power

doctrine. Both the case and the doctrine have been widely and persistently

condemned in the scholarly literature.

It almost seems an obligatory rite of

passage for scholars embarking on the study of immigration law to provide

their own critique of plenary power or related doctrines of deference.

To be sure, there are many reasons for twenty-first-century observers to

be deeply troubled by Chae Chan Ping. The 1888 law it sustained stemmed

from xenophobic and racist agitation in California, scapegoating the

1. 130 U.S. 581 (1889).

2. See, e.g., T.

ALEXANDER ALEINIKOFF, SEMBLANCES OF SOVEREIGNTY: THE

CONSTITUTION, THE STATE, AND AMERICAN CITIZENSHIP 12-14, 151-96 (2002); STEPHEN H.

LEGOMSKY, IMMIGRATION AND THE JUDICIARY: LAW AND POLITICS IN BRITAIN AND AMERICA

177-218 (1987); Sarah H. Cleveland, Powers Inherent in Sovereignty: Indians, Aliens,

Territories, and the Nineteenth Century Origins of Plenary Power over Foreign Affairs, 81

EX. L. REV. 1, 124-34 (2002); Adam B. Cox, Citizenship, Standing, and Immigration Law,

92 C

ALIF. L. REV. 373, 378-90 (2004); Louis Henkin, The Constitution and United States

Sovereignty: A Century of Chinese Exclusion and Its Progeny, 100 H

ARV. L. REV. 853, 858-

63 (1987); Berta Esperanza Hernández-Truyol, Nativism, Terrorism, and Human Rights—

The Global Wrongs of Reno v. American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, 31 C

OLUM.

HUM. RTS. L. REV. 521, 538-46 (2000); Linda Kelly, Preserving the Fundamental Right to

Family Unity: Championing Notions of Social Contract and Community Ties in the Battle of

Plenary Power Versus Aliens' Rights, 41 V

ILL. L. REV. 725, 733-38 (1996); Stephen H.

Legomsky, Immigration Law and the Principle of Plenary Congressional Power, 1984 S

UP.

CT. REV. 255, 255-57; Hiroshi Motomura, The Curious Evolution of Immigration Law:

Procedural Surrogates for Substantive Constitutional Rights, 92 C

OLUM. L. REV. 1625

(1992); Hiroshi Motomura, Immigration Law After a Century of Plenary Power: Phantom

Constitutional Norms and Statutory Interpretation, 100 Y

ALE L.J. 545, 550-54 (1990);

Natsu Taylor Saito, The Enduring Effect of the Chinese Exclusion Cases: The "Plenary

Power" Justification for On-Going Abuses of Human Rights, 10 ASIAN L.J. 13, 13 (2003);

John A. Scanlan, Aliens in the Marketplace of Ideas: The Government, the Academy, and the

McCarran-Walter Act, 66 TEX. L. REV. 1481, 1499-1504 (1988); Michael Scaperlanda,

Polishing the Tarnished Golden Door, 1993 W

IS. L. REV. 965, 1022-31; Margaret H. Taylor,

Detained Aliens Challenging Conditions of Confinement and the Porous Border of the

Plenary Power Doctrine, 22 HASTINGS CONST. L.Q. 1087, 1127-29 (1995). Some find that

plenary power doctrine is waning. See, e.g., Peter H. Schuck, The Transformation of

Immigration Law, 84 C

OLUM. L. REV. 1, 34-54 (1984); Peter J. Spiro, Explaining the End of

Plenary Power, 16 G

EO. IMMIGR. L.J. 339, 345-55 (2002).

3. My own young-scholar contribution to this genre focused not on Chae Chan Ping’s

plenary power doctrine, but rather on its procedural cousin, the doctrine deriving from

United States ex rel. Knauff v. Shaughnessy, 338 U.S. 537, 542-44 (1950), which largely

bars the courts from entertaining procedural due process claims in exclusion cases. David A.

Martin, Due Process and Membership in the National Community: Political Asylum and

Beyond, 44 P

ITTS. L. REV. 165 (1983).

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2015] WHY THE PLENARY POWER DOCTRINE ENDURES 31

Chinese in the midst of a severe economic recession.

And Chae Chan Ping

himself is a highly sympathetic petitioner. He had lawfully resided in the

United States for fifteen years, journeying back to visit family in China

only after carefully obtaining the official certificate provided by law as the

means for his readmission.

He was already at sea on his return voyage

when Congress changed the law, with immediate effect, nullifying the use

of those certificates to gain reentry.

Hence his exclusion and his habeas

corpus challenge.

Nonetheless, the case receives more blame than it deserves. For example,

the Court’s invocation of sovereignty in Chae Chan Ping is sometimes seen

as an illegitimate judicial move meant to introduce a factor that will trump

rights claims.

The Court invoked sovereignty, however, not to deny rights

but instead primarily to answer a federalism question. It used the concept to

establish, through structural reasoning, that the federal government in fact

does possess the authority to regulate migration, even though such a power

is not enumerated in the Constitution. Furthermore, though the plenary

power doctrine forecloses most direct constitutional challenges against

congressional immigration statutes, it is hardly the blank check for the

executive that is sometimes suggested. Significant statute-based challenges

to executive action remain available, as do procedural due process

challenges, at least to deportation proceedings.

Offered here is an exploration of the reasons given in Chae Chan Ping

and the kindred case of Fong Yue Ting

for deference to the political

branches. (Decided four years later, Fong Yue Ting extended the Court’s

deferential stance beyond exclusion at the border to give Congress wide

authority in setting and changing substantive standards governing

4. See HIROSHI MOTOMURA, AMERICANS IN WAITING: THE LOST STORY OF

IMMIGRATION AND CITIZENSHIP IN THE UNITED STATES 15-26 (2006).

5. Chae Chan Ping, 130 U.S. at 581.

6. Id.

7. See Gabriel J. Chin, Chae Chan Ping and Fong Yue Ting: The Origins of the

Plenary Power, in I

MMIGRATION STORIES 7, 11-13 (David A. Martin & Peter H. Schuck eds.,

2005).

8. See, e.g., Hernández-Truyol, supra note 2, at 539 (“Flowing from this notion [of

sovereignty] is the principle that the federal government has preemptive, unfettered

regulatory power over the exclusion of others or outsiders . . . .”); Saito, supra note 2, at 33

(“[T]he Supreme Court's justification for the exercise of plenary power is that the power is

inherent in sovereignty.”).

9. See, e.g., Yamataya v. Fisher, 189 U.S. 86 (1903).

10. Fong Yue Ting v. United States, 149 U.S. 698 (1893).

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32 OKLAHOMA LAW REVIEW [Vol. 68:29

deportation, even of long-time settled residents.

) I go on to consider why

the plenary power doctrine nonetheless endures, despite the scholarly

condemnation and the proffered alternatives, even as the Supreme Court

has assumed a far more assertive role in rights protection in other domains.

Ultimately, the reasons for the doctrine’s survival are likely to gain in

strength over coming decades, in a world facing new and more challenging

forms of violence and conflict, a growing number of weak or failing states,

a possible increase in virulently contagious diseases, and more severe

migration pressures.

In that light, I conclude by suggesting a few lessons about the scholarly

reaction. The litigation picture is not so bleak as often portrayed.

Subconstitutional litigation is plentiful, with a significant success rate for

challengers and a de facto sparsity of judicial deference to the government,

though the Supreme Court occasionally reaches down to curb a few of the

more ambitious judicial interventions.

Moreover, even though bold

constitutional reforms through the judicial branch are not in the offing,

constitutional values can be invoked in other ways besides litigation — and

in fact have been invoked over the past fifty years to win highly significant

changes in immigration laws through the political process. We scholars

need to focus on expanding our toolbox and improving the ways we train

our students to use methods other than constitutional litigation, particularly

rigorous policy analysis attuned to the true complexity of migration

management and the political constraints. We should also foster a realistic

perspective on the high level of immigration opportunity and noncitizen

protection that mark our overall system — especially when viewed against

the backdrop of global practices — even while working to improve those

features.

I. The Deployment of Sovereignty

A. Immigration Control: A Structural Feature of Sovereign Nationhood

Much of the scholarly criticism focuses on the invocation of sovereignty

in Chae Chan Ping and Fong Yue Ting, blaming that analytical move for

the decisions’ broad deference to the political branches and the later

11. Id. at 713-15, 728-29.

12. See, e.g., I.N.S. v. Ventura, 537 U.S. 12 (2002) (per curiam); I.N.S. v. Aguirre-

Aguirre, 526 U.S. 415 (1999); Reno v. American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Comm., 525

U.S. 471 (1999).

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2015] WHY THE PLENARY POWER DOCTRINE ENDURES 33

development of immigration exceptionalism.

But if we take a closer look,

we find the Court did not deploy sovereignty as a basis for denying rights;

instead, it used the concept primarily to solve a federalism problem.

Justice Stephen Field, author of the unanimous decision in Chae Chan

Ping, first examined the petitioner’s claim that he should be admitted

because the 1888 Chinese Exclusion Act violated an 1880 treaty with

China.

Clearly the statute did violate the treaty, but Field, in his first

reference to sovereignty, wrote that treaties and statutes are of equal rank,

and in the case of a conflict, “the last expression of the sovereign will must

control.”

This is a logical reading of the Supremacy Clause in Article VI

of the Constitution, which places treaties and statutes on an equal plane as

supreme law of the land. And by 1889, the Court had already so ruled in

other cases.

Any particular decision to breach a treaty is of course fair

game for policy objection, even condemnation. But it remains a necessary

part of international practice that a nation’s leadership retain the power to

breach a treaty. Most compellingly, in our underdeveloped and

decentralized international legal system, the primary enforcement tool

available to address another party’s own treaty violations is a responsive

breach by the wronged party.

Objection to any treaty breach, the Court

13. See supra note 8 and accompanying text. On immigration exceptionalism, see, e.g.,

T. Alexander Aleinikoff, Citizens, Aliens, Membership and the Constitution, 7 C

ONST.

COMMENTARY 9, 34 (1990); Hiroshi Motomura, Federalism, International Human Rights,

and Immigration Exceptionalism, 70 U.

COLO. L. REV. 1361, 1392-94 (1999).

14. 130 U.S. at 596-601.

15. Id. at 600.

16. Whitney v. Robertson, 124 U.S. 190, 194 (1888); Head Money Cases (Edye v.

Robertson), 112 U.S. 580, 597-99 (1884).

17. Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties art. 60, January 27, 1980, 1155 U.N.T.S.

331; R

ESTATEMENT (THIRD) OF FOREIGN RELATIONS LAW OF THE UNITED STATES § 335

(1986); J

AMES CRAWFORD, BROWNLIE’S PRINCIPLES OF PUBLIC INTERNATIONAL LAW 391-92

(8th ed. 2012). The terminology generally used in these sources speaks of treaty termination

or suspension in response to a material breach, but this is simply diplomatic terminology for

what is in reality a responsive breach. Justice Field also emphasized this feature in Chae

Chan Ping:

It will not be presumed that the legislative department of the government will

lightly pass laws which are in conflict with the treaties of the country; but that

circumstances may arise which would not only justify the government in

disregarding their stipulations, but demand in the interests of the country that it

should do so, there can be no question. Unexpected events may call for a

change in the policy of the country. Neglect or violation of stipulations on the

part of the other contracting party may require corresponding action on our

part. When a reciprocal engagement is not carried out by one of the contracting

parties, the other may also decline to keep the corresponding engagement.

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34 OKLAHOMA LAW REVIEW [Vol. 68:29

insists, must be lodged in other forums, via diplomacy or domestic political

action, and in either case be addressed to the political branches.

This

initial part of the opinion, ratifying Congress’s authority to violate treaties,

actually tells us little about the concept of sovereignty.

The next section of the opinion, however, is where that concept draws

primary attention. Beyond the treaty claim, Justice Field took the petitioner

to be asserting that there were “other ground[s]” placing the Chinese

Exclusion Act “beyond the competency of Congress to pass it.”

The

challenge is not framed in exactly this manner, but it basically poses a

federalism issue. Under our constitutional system, it is the states, not the

federal government, that possess residual general powers, commonly called

police powers. The federal government is conventionally understood to

possess only those powers enumerated in the Constitution. By what

authority, then, does the federal government assert the power to block

certain foreigners from entering the country?

The closest enumerated

power would seem to be Congress’s authority to adopt “an uniform Rule of

Naturalization.”

But naturalization is not the same thing as admission to

the territory, and the Naturalization Clause has never seemed fully up to the

task of supporting the complicated superstructure of federal immigration

controls erected since the adoption of the Chinese Exclusion Acts.

130 U.S. at 600-01.

18. 130 U.S. at 602-03.

19. Id. at 603.

20. The question could be taken as the same one with which Justice Sutherland

struggled fifty years later, first in a lecture at Columbia Law School, but more famously in

his majority opinion in United States v. Curtiss-Wright Export Corp., 299 U.S. 304, 316

(1946). He answered it by propounding an eccentric but elaborate sovereignty transmission

theory. For analysis and critique of Sutherland’s doctrine, see, e.g., Charles A. Lofgren,

United States v. Curtiss-Wright Export Corporation: An Historical Reassessment, 83 Y

ALE

L.J. 1 (1973); Michael D. Ramsey, The Myth of Extraconstitutional Foreign Affairs Power,

42 W

M. & MARY L. REV. 379 (2000). Field’s mode of overcoming the conceptual difficulty

posed by the sparse list of foreign-affairs powers in the text of the Constitution is far more

successful and convincing than Sutherland’s.

The Supreme Court recently resolved a narrow question regarding the derivation and

allocation of certain foreign affairs authorities. Zivotofsky ex rel. Zivotofsky v. Kerry, 135

S. Ct. 2076, 2096 (2015) (holding that the President’s authority to recognize other

governments is exclusive, and that a congressional statute mandating certain statements on a

U.S. citizen’s passport was therefore unconstitutional). But broader issues about how to

construe the Constitution’s parsimonious language on foreign affairs powers remain

unresolved. Compare id. at 2076-96 (Kennedy, J., majority opinion), with id. at 2096-2113

(Thomas, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part), and id. at 2113-16 (Roberts, C.J.,

dissenting), and id. at 2116-26 (Scalia, J., dissenting).

21. U.S.

CONST. art. I, § 8, cl. 4.

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2015] WHY THE PLENARY POWER DOCTRINE ENDURES 35

We might first note that this type of challenge to congressional power

was something of a dangerous argument for the Chinese community to

propound in 1889.

To prove that the federal government lacks the

authority to control migration would not have spelled the end of U.S.

migration controls. It would instead almost surely have meant that such

power belongs to the states as part of their general police powers. As of

1889, that prospect certainly did not point toward adoption of more humane

laws.

In any event, Field rose to meet the federalism challenge:

That the government of the United States, through the action of

the legislative department, can exclude aliens from its territory is

a proposition which we do not think open to controversy.

Jurisdiction over its own territory to that extent is an incident of

every independent nation. It is a part of its independence. If it

could not exclude aliens it would be to that extent subject to the

control of another power.

By invoking the very concept of independent nationhood, Field is

staking out an additional theoretical foundation for specific federal

powers — one not confined to enumerated text. As Charles Black has

elegantly argued in his classic work, Structure and Relationship in

Constitutional Law, not all constitutional powers and restrictions must trace

to a specific text. Certain structural features or premises of our basic charter

can also provide a legitimate source of constitutional interpretation and

reasoning.

At its base, the Constitution is a founding document that constitutes —

establishes the framework for — governance of a nation. This nation was

22. As documented in Lucy Salyer’s fine book on the Chinese experience with the

immigration laws, Chae Chan Ping’s case was part of a broad litigation effort against anti-

Chinese legislation, financed and skillfully managed by the Chinese Six Companies, an

umbrella community organization, which had scored several notable courtroom victories

against hostile state and federal enactments in the late nineteenth century. LUCY SALYER,

AWS HARSH AS TIGERS: CHINESE IMMIGRANTS AND THE SHAPING OF MODERN IMMIGRATION

LAW 40-41 and passim (1995); see also Chin, supra note 7, at 7, 9-10.

23. See R

ONALD TAKAKI, A DIFFERENT MIRROR: A HISTORY OF MULTICULTURAL

AMERICA 200-09 (1993) (describing the growing nativist resentment against Chinese in the

late nineteenth century, accompanied by new legislative restrictions at the federal, state, and

local levels).

24. 130 U.S. at 603-04 (emphasis added).

25. C

HARLES L. BLACK, JR., STRUCTURE AND RELATIONSHIP IN CONSTITUTIONAL LAW

22-23, 67-98 (1969).

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36 OKLAHOMA LAW REVIEW [Vol. 68:29

clearly intended to take its place in the global community of nations,

possessed of all the powers implicit in the understanding of such an

institution. As of 1787, the United States would be a nearly unique player in

that league. The framers created a republic rather than a monarchy, and one

with a written charter that intentionally sets out both governmental powers

and individual rights, along with restrictions and specifications governing

some of those powers. Nonetheless, the Constitution emphatically was

written to establish a nation, not a mere association of persons seeking to

achieve a limited range of contractual purposes. Asserting jurisdiction over

a territory, which includes authority to choose which noncitizens to admit

or exclude, is simply part of what it means to be a sovereign nation.

This

is the primary context in which Field deploys the concept of sovereignty.

26. See RESTATEMENT (THIRD) OF FOREIGN RELATIONS LAW § 201 (listing “a defined

territory and a permanent population” as required characteristics of a state for international

law purposes).

27. This same mode of reasoning dominates the Court’s decision in Fong Yue Ting v.

United States, 149 U.S. 698 (1893), which involved deportation of a Chinese national

already in the United States, rather than exclusion at the border. The majority, in essence,

saw Justice Field’s structural, sovereignty-based reasoning in Chae Chan Ping as fully

applicable: “The right to exclude or to expel all aliens, or any class of aliens, absolutely or

upon certain conditions, in war or in peace, [is] . . . an inherent and inalienable right of every

sovereign and independent nation . . . .” Id. at 711 (emphasis added).

Intriguingly, Field dissented with exceptional vehemence in Fong Yue Ting, objecting in

particular to the notion that the U.S. government “take[s] any power by any supposed

inherent sovereignty.” 149 U.S. at 757. But at the same time, he expressed pride at being the

author of the earlier decision. Id. at 746. The objection and the pride are at best in tension, if

not in flat contradiction. See Cleveland, supra note 2, at 144-49 (offering thoughtful

reflections on Field’s contradictory stances in the two cases). His dissent seeks to reconcile

the difference by taking refuge in the argument that the U.S. Constitution has no

extraterritorial application (a geographical designation which also renders it inapplicable to

aliens at ports of entry), whereas it applies fully within our borders.

Elsewhere, Field puts a somewhat different spin on the distinction, however,

emphasizing the injustice of applying new restrictions to “persons lawfully domiciled therein

by [the nation’s] consent.” 149 U.S. at 754-55 (Field, J., dissenting). In modern terms, the

latter distinction would essentially be that between lawful permanent residents (entitled to

the strongest measure of procedural and substantive due process protection) and other aliens

within the borders. The other two dissenters in Fong Yue Ting also placed emphasis on the

unfairness of applying new restrictions so as to uproot persons who had taken up residence

with governmental consent. Id. at 734-35 (Brewer, J., dissenting); id. at 762-63 (Fuller, J.,

dissenting). I find the more functionalist distinction, based essentially on the legitimate

expectations that spring from the nation’s consent to domicile, far more faithful than the

geographic one to the premises of our overall constitutional scheme. See Martin, supra note

3, at 214-215; see also David A. Martin, Graduated Application of Constitutional

Protections for Aliens: The Real Meaning of Zadvydas v. Davis, 2001 S

UP. CT. REV. 47.

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2015] WHY THE PLENARY POWER DOCTRINE ENDURES 37

Building on several earlier Supreme Court decisions from previous

decades,

Field goes on to explain why this sovereign authority cannot be a

power exercised by the states:

[T]he United States, in their relation to foreign countries and

their subjects or citizens, are one nation, invested with powers

which belong to independent nations, the exercise of which can

be invoked for the maintenance of its absolute independence and

security throughout its entire territory. . . . “[T]he government

which is alone capable of controlling and managing their

interests in all these respects is the government of the Union. . . .

It can, then, in effecting these objects, legitimately control all

individuals or governments within the American territory. . . .”

. . . It is invested with power over all the foreign relations of the

country, war, peace, and negotiations and intercourse with other

nations; all of which are forbidden to the state governments. It

has jurisdiction over all those general subjects of legislation and

sovereignty which affect the interests of the whole people

equally and alike, and which require uniformity of regulations

and laws . . . .

Justice Field thus clearly claims the immigration control power for the

federal government. At the same time, he generalizes further, in a way that

helps solve a broader constitutional difficulty — namely, finding federal

authority to engage in the full range of actions entailed in the conduct of

foreign relations, rather than simply those rather skeletal specific actions

adumbrated in the Constitution’s text, such as receiving foreign

ambassadors. In fact, many writers have commented on the paucity of text

to support the full range of actions actually undertaken in the conduct of

diplomacy and foreign policy.

This requirement that the nation speak with one voice on the world stage

(rather than thirty-eight different state voices, as would have been the case

in 1889) has become a refrain importantly repeated in many later court

28. Chy Lung v. Freeman, 92 U.S. 275, 280 (1875), Henderson v. Mayor of City of

New York, 92 U.S. 259, 272 (1875), Head Money Cases (Edye v. Robertson), 112 U.S. 580,

593-94 (1884).

29. 130 U.S. at 604-05 (quoting the opinion of Chief Justice Marshall in Cohens v.

Virginia, 19 U.S. (6 Wheat.) 264, 413-14 (1821)).

30. E.g., L

OUIS HENKIN, FOREIGN AFFAIRS AND THE CONSTITUTION 79 (2d ed. 1996);

Ramsey, supra note 19, at 437-38.

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38 OKLAHOMA LAW REVIEW [Vol. 68:29

decisions with foreign-affairs implications, including the 2012 immigration

decision in Arizona v. United States.

Field invokes sovereignty in Chae

Chan Ping, then, primarily to justify exclusive federal power to control

immigration, despite the lack of an anchor in explicit constitutional text.

Ironically, most of today’s critics of the 1889 decision, having the Arizona

decision in mind, would probably endorse this part of the Court’s

conclusions.

B. Sovereignty Is Subject to Constitutional Limits

Some commentators blame the invocation of sovereignty for a different

feature of the opinion to which they strongly object — the Court’s refusal

to engage in probing judicial review of the Chinese Exclusion Act or the

executive action applying the exclusion rule to Chae Chan Ping.

If the

migration control authority is an extra-constitutional power deriving from

sovereignty, the argument goes, then it follows that it is immune to

constitutional constraints. But this critique misunderstands the reasoning at

work in the opinion. Judicial deference to certain kinds of immigration

actions, especially to congressional enactments, did not derive from the

concept of sovereignty. It arose instead from the Court’s understanding of

proper institutional roles, given the complex dynamics in the foreign affairs

realm and the limited range of tools available to a government to affect

behavior globally, as compared to the domestic arena.

First, as a conceptual matter, there is no reason why sovereign powers, at

least in a polity like the United States, necessarily escape constitutional

constraints. Imposing the loss of liberty (or even life) based on conviction

of a crime, for example, certainly amounts to the exercise of a sovereign

power — justifiable because it is carried out only by those sovereign

31. Arizona v. United States, 132 S. Ct. 2492, 2506-07 (2012); Crosby v. Nat’l. Foreign

Trade Council, 530 U.S. 363, 381-82 (2000); Japan Line Ltd. v. Cnty. of Los Angeles, 441

U.S. 434, 449 (1979).

32. See Henkin, supra note 2, at 857-58; Hernández-Truyol, supra note 2, at 539-42;

Saito, supra note 2, at 24. This concern also figures prominently in Justice Brewer’s dissent

in Fong Yue Ting:

It is said that the power here asserted is inherent in sovereignty. This doctrine

of powers inherent in sovereignty is one both indefinite and dangerous. Where

are the limits to such powers to be found, and by whom are they to be

pronounced? . . . May the courts establish the boundaries? Whence do they

obtain the authority for this?

149 U.S. at 737. Brewer, a nephew of Justice Field, joined the Court a half year after Chae

Chan Ping was decided. Owen M. Fiss, David J. Brewer: The Judge as Missionary, in T

FIELDS AND THE LAW: ESSAYS 53-54 (Philip J. Bergan et al. eds., 1986).

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institutions considered to have a monopoly on the legitimate use of coercive

force. Nonetheless, in our polity, criminal punishment remains subject to a

host of constitutional restrictions that protect individual rights.

Second, at a deeper level, subjecting sovereign powers to constitutional

restrictions is thoroughly consistent with the innovative public philosophy

developed during our nation’s founding in order to explain the new form of

nation the framers were building. As explicated by Gordon Wood in his

magisterial work The Creation of the American Republic,

the founding

generation pioneered a new philosophy of government wherein sovereignty

belongs to the people, not to a monarch or some other governmental organ.

In this new republic, governments — federal or state — exercise sovereign

powers only by delegation from the people. The delegation comes subject

to whatever conditions the sovereign people choose to impose. There is no

conceptual reason why a power that is not expressly enumerated, but

instead is structurally derived from the fact of nationhood, should be free of

constitutional constraints equally stemming from the decision of the

sovereign people. Nonetheless — and this is key to understanding Justice

Field’s ultimate treatment — subjection to constitutional constraints vel non

is a different issue from deciding precisely which institutions are properly

involved in fulfilling a faithful discharge of the people’s bounded

delegation.

II. Foreign Affairs Linkage

A. Foreign Affairs as the Central Reason for Judicial Deference in Chae

Chan Ping

Justice Field, of course, does wind up treating the political branch’s

conclusions, in this particular setting, as conclusive on the judiciary — but

he does not rest that outcome on the idea that immigration control is a

sovereign power outside the reach of the Constitution. Instead, he offers a

statement about institutional roles seen as appropriate for the respective

branches of government in this specific domain. In the foreign arena, he

writes, as a matter of “self-preservation,”

the government has the “highest

duty” to “preserve . . . independence, and give security against foreign

aggression and encroachment.”

To achieve these ends, the government

33. GORDON S. WOOD, THE CREATION OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC: 1776-1787, at 344-

89 (1969).

34. 130 U.S. at 608.

35. Id. at 606.

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40 OKLAHOMA LAW REVIEW [Vol. 68:29

is clothed with authority to determine the occasion on which the

powers shall be called forth; and its determinations, so far as the

subjects affected are concerned, are necessarily conclusive upon

all its departments and officers. . . . The existence of war would

render the necessity of the proceeding only more obvious and

pressing. The same necessity, in a less pressing degree, may

arise when war does not exist, and the same authority which

adjudges the necessity in one case must also determine it in the

other. In both cases its determination is conclusive upon the

judiciary.

In other words, in 1888, the political branches judged necessary the

application of a new absolute rule excluding Chinese laborers, in order to

achieve security against what Congress deemed a type of foreign

encroachment.

Even with misgivings about the justice or fairness of the

36. Id. (emphasis added). An earlier part of the opinion takes a similar approach in

refusing to examine the congressional decision to breach the treaty with China when it

passed the 1888 statute that led to Chae Chan Ping’s exclusion. After noting that there have

been many occasions when a breach of treaty terms has been unquestionably appropriate

(e.g., as part of our nation’s 1798 non-military conflict with revolutionary France), the

opinion indicates that if the power rests with Congress, the Court is not to pass judgment

upon Congress’s motives. Id. at 602. The Fong Yue Ting majority expresses the same view,

suggesting that the substantive basis for invoking one of these protective powers amounts to

a political question. 149 U.S. at 712.

37. It is hard for the modern observer to see Chinese migration in late nineteenth

century as a form of deliberate “encroachment,” especially if this concept is meant to

suggest insidious plots by the government of the source nation. Field’s characterization

probably reflects more a reaction to scale. By some estimates, Chinese nationals constituted

nearly one-eighth of California’s population as of 1880. H

IROSHI MOTOMURA, AMERICANS IN

WAITING: THE LOST STORY OF IMMIGRATION AND CITIZENSHIP IN THE UNITED STATES 16

(2006) (noting that in 1880 California’s Chinese immigrant population equaled 105,000 out

of the total 865,000 residents). This migration was largely drawn by the gold rush and its

aftermath, which opened up high demand for cheap labor, especially in mining and railroad

construction. See T

AKAKI, supra note 23, at 191-204.

As of 2015, however, we unfortunately do have recent examples of insidious forms of

deliberate encroachment in the guise of migration — Russia’s sending into Ukraine skilled

soldiers who have stripped away identifying insignia, as well as convoys pretending to be

humanitarian. See Alison Smale and Steven Erlanger, Ukraine Mobilizes Reserve Troops,

Threatening War, N.Y.

TIMES, Mar. 1, 2014, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/02/world/

europe/ukraine.html?_r=0; Sam Frizell, Russia Now Has 20,000 Troops on Ukraine Border,

NATO Warns, TIME, Aug. 6, 2014, http://time.com/3085889/nato-russia-ukraine-troops-

buildup/; Reuters, Putin Calls for Talks on East Ukraine Statehood, But Not Independence,

EWSWEEK (Aug. 31, 2014, 11:31 AM), http://www.newsweek.com/putin-calls-talks-east-

ukraine-statehood-not-independence-267778. This tactic achieved enough success in

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2015] WHY THE PLENARY POWER DOCTRINE ENDURES 41

action, the courts will not second-guess that judgment of necessity. In

realms touching upon foreign relations and potential national self-

preservation, Field indicates, the nation must speak with one voice, and it is

not for the courts to introduce a discordant sound.

B. Complexity, Prophecy, and Experimentation in Foreign Affairs

Decisionmaking

Some critics of the plenary power doctrine question this asserted linkage

between immigration and foreign affairs. Chinese exclusion was not a

foreign affairs decision, they assert, but one driven by domestic political

considerations — and in fact it worsened our relations with China.

The

invocation of foreign affairs is seen as a pretext covering up uglier motives,

and the plenary power doctrine prevents courts from looking behind the

mask.

Therefore, some assert that courts should simply provide the

ordinary measure of constitutional scrutiny — to smoke out invidious

motives or at least to provide an appropriate evaluation of the weight of the

governmental interest in light of the individual stake.

This kind of pretextual invocation certainly can occur. But here is the

difficulty: We should not assume that pretexts in the foreign affairs arena

Ukraine that future variants may prove tempting, for Russia and for other expansionist

powers.

38. See THOMAS ALEXANDER ALEINIKOFF & DAVID A. MARTIN, IMMIGRATION: PROCESS

AND

POLICY 12 (1st ed. 1985) (suggesting that the Chinese Exclusion Laws were passed

despite foreign policy objectives, not because of them); Legomsky, Immigration Law and

the Principle of Plenary Congressional Power, supra note 2, at 263 (suggesting that

domestic political forces rather than international relations served as the primary impetus for

the Chinese Exclusion Laws).

39. Hernández-Truyol, supra note 2, at 539-40; Legomsky, Immigration Law and the

Principle of Plenary Congressional Power, supra note 2, at 261; Saito, supra note 2, at 20.

40. It is far from clear, however, that this change in approach would have produced

wins for the noncitizen claimants in the most frequently criticized cases, because the Court’s

own constitutional doctrine at the specific time would often have accepted an imposition on

individual rights that by today’s lights seems deeply objectionable. Jack Chin’s iconoclastic

article on the plenary power doctrine has developed this argument quite effectively. Gabriel

J. Chin, Is There a Plenary Power Doctrine? A Tentative Apology and Prediction for Our

Strange but Exceptional Constitutional Immigration Law, 14 G

EO. IMMIGR. L.J. 257 (2000).

Fong Yue Ting, for example, upheld an evidentiary rule allowing proof of prior residence

only through the testimony of white witnesses. Such a rule would evoke the strictest scrutiny

today, but that would hardly have been the likely outcome in 1893, three years before Plessy

v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896), was decided. To take another example, by the time the

Court was consistently applying strict scrutiny to racial classifications in the mid-1960s,

Congress had acted to terminate the national-origins quota system. Chin, supra, at 261-64.

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42 OKLAHOMA LAW REVIEW [Vol. 68:29

are readily identifiable. As Justice Breyer observed in a recent political

question case:

Decisionmaking in [the foreign affairs] area typically is highly

political. It is “delicate” and “complex.” It often rests upon

information readily available to the Executive Branch and to the

intelligence committees of Congress, but not readily available to

the courts. It frequently is highly dependent upon what Justice

Jackson called “prophecy.” And the creation of wise foreign

policy typically lies well beyond the experience or professional

capacity of a judge. At the same time, where foreign affairs is at

issue, the practical need for the United States to speak “with one

voice and ac[t] as one,” is particularly important.

Many of the nation’s policy tools in the foreign arena are crude and

imprecise, with uncertain impact. This very uncertainty may require trial-

and-error application, with a need for quick policy changes, especially in

times of crisis. Therefore, deference to the political branches is called for,

not because we can always be sure that their motives are pure and

nondiscriminatory — we cannot — but because subjecting these measures

to detailed litigation would interfere with the flexibility often necessary to

act beyond our borders. A too-ready judicial interference would also impair

our ability to deploy uncertain tools — deriving from immigration control,

trade regulation, or other components of our international relations —

according to a single unified strategy.

C. An Example: The Contrast to Domestic Measures

Consider the seizure of U.S. diplomats by militants in Tehran in 1978.

After the embassy invasion was ratified and defended by the new Iranian

41. Zivotofsky ex rel. Zivotofsky v. Clinton, 132 S. Ct. 1421, 1437-38 (2012) (Breyer,

J., dissenting) (quoting Justice Jackson’s majority opinion in Chicago & S. Air Lines v.

Waterman S. S. Corp., 333 U.S. 103, 111 (1948), and Justice Frankfurter’s concurring

opinion in United States v. Pink, 315 U.S. 203, 242 (1942)).

42. Justice Jackson captured some of this strategic consideration, coupled with the need

for clear accountability in the face of the looming risk that particular courses of action on the

global stage may prove unsuccessful, perhaps disastrously so, in the following passage from

in his opinion in Chicago and Southern Air Lines, 333 U.S. at 111. Foreign policy decisions,

he wrote, “are and should be undertaken only by those directly responsible to the people

whose welfare they advance or imperil. They are decisions of a kind for which the Judiciary

has neither aptitude, facilities nor responsibility and have long been held to belong in the

domain of political power not subject to judicial intrusion or inquiry.” 333 U.S. at 111

(emphasis added).

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2015] WHY THE PLENARY POWER DOCTRINE ENDURES 43

government, the U.S. government turned to a disparate variety of

countermeasures to try to win release of the American hostages, including

the seizure of billions of dollars in assets of Iran and of its companies and

nationals, litigation in the International Court of Justice, an ill-fated military

rescue attempt after Iran defied the International Court, diplomatic

overtures through Algeria, and certain immigration-law-based restrictions

imposed on Iranian nationals in the United States.

There were even

proposals at the time to use immigration or other powers to intern large

numbers of Iranian nationals so they could perhaps be part of an exchange

that would bring the diplomats home.

Thankfully, such internment was

never put into motion.

Contrast the trial-and-error use of these generally crude and scattershot

measures with how the government would respond to a domestic

kidnapping and potential hostage situation. The police could deploy quickly

to investigate who seized the victims and where they were currently

located. In that process the authorities could use judicial search warrants to

facilitate the inquiry, plus arrest warrants and compulsory grand jury

subpoenas as appropriate. They could call on a wide range of assistance

and technical support from a host of fully empowered domestic agencies,

state and federal. Once the kidnappers were located, the police would

establish perimeter control around the hostage site. No hostile militias

would stand in the way (or if such appeared, other governmental power,

43. Marian L. Nash, Contemporary Practice of the United States Relating to

International Law: Aliens, 74 A

M. J. INT’L L. 917, 920-21 (1980); Marian L. Nash,

Contemporary Practice of the United States Relating to International Law: Foreign Assets

Control, 74 A

M. J. INT’L L. 418, 427-29 (1980); Marian L. Nash, Contemporary Practice of

the United States Relating to International Law: Termination of Relations, 74 A

M. J. INT’L L.

657 (1980). The Attorney General imposed a special call-in requirement on Iranian

postsecondary students to report to an office of the Immigration and Naturalization Service

or to a campus representative to present certain documentation and thus permit review of

whether they remained in compliance with the conditions placed on their immigration status.

The court of appeals sustained this action against constitutional challenge in Narenji v.

Civiletti, 617 F.2d 745 (D.C. Cir. 1979).

44. The celebrated foreign policy thinker George Kennan proposed interning Iranian

nationals in the United States, though he focused on using a formal declaration of war, rather

than relying upon statutory immigration authorities, to do so. See U.S. Security Interests and

Policies in Southwest Asia: Hearings on U.S. Security Requirements in the Near East and

South Asia Before the Subcomm. on Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs of the S. Comm.

on Foreign Relations, 96th Cong. 87-123 (1980) (statement of Hon. George Kennan, Former

Ambassador to the U.S.S.R.), available at http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=pur1.

32754074685235;view=1up;seq=92; William F. Buckley, George Kennan’s Bomb, 32

ATIONAL REVIEW 432 (1980).

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44 OKLAHOMA LAW REVIEW [Vol. 68:29

including the National Guard, could be deployed). In a protracted standoff,

judicially issued search warrants might help legitimate a forcible rescue

operation. And the full weight of criminal punishment, imposed through

efficiently functioning courts, could be expected for the kidnappers or

hostage takers.

This comparison helps reveal why courts are positioned to apply close

constitutional scrutiny of official domestic action, whenever it is credibly

challenged, but properly feel more constrained in the international arena. In

the international arena, U.S. actors generally cannot invoke compulsory

process or other reliable coercive means under their own government’s

control. Moreover, the stakes are typically higher, as is the number of

people potentially affected — not only by the immediate outcome but also

by downstream effects, as the resolution either deters similar adverse

actions in the future or instead stimulates them because the U.S. effort

failed. With a domestic operation, judges can be confident that the

government will still have plenty of capacity to deal with public safety

threats, even in the presence of robust judicial review. One cannot have

such confidence about the efficacy of alternative policy tools in the global

arena if domestic judicial action begins to prevent or second-guess or slow

down the use of those initially chosen by the political branches.

Another difference between the two settings is relevant. In the domestic

arena, we do not tolerate individuals using tit-for-tat responses to remedy

wrongful behavior. I cannot justify seizing and carrying away my

neighbor’s television on the ground that he borrowed my riding mower

months ago and never returned it. But this prohibition on messy self-help

obtains precisely because efficient hierarchical legal mechanisms, involving

professional police and a developed court system, stand available to redress

my neighbor’s wrongful act. In recent decades, the world has taken limited

but hopeful steps toward investing transnational institutions with

comparable powers, but progress remains quite uneven across different

policy domains. The plenary power doctrine manifests the Supreme Court’s

judgment that the kind of detailed constitutional scrutiny appropriate for the

mature and developed domestic public order is not workable in the more

primitive international legal system, marked primarily by horizontal action-

and-response to try to rectify breaches.

D. The Nongovernmental Component of Foreign Affairs Decisionmaking

Foreign affairs are involved in immigration decisionmaking for another,

more entangling reason, even when there is no clear effort to retaliate

against or to influence a foreign government. Most high-level immigration

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decisions — by Congress or by the executive branch — are designed, at

least in part, to influence or shape behavior overseas by individuals and

nonstate actors, including both prospective immigrants (contemplating

either legal or illegal channels) and smuggling organizations. For example,

the decision (part of Operation Streamline

) to prosecute a high percentage

of simple entrants without inspection caught along the southern border,

causing them to spend some time in jail or prison before being repatriated,

has been criticized as disproportionate to the inherent nature of this

misdemeanor offense.

But this critique misunderstands the policy

decision. Operation Streamline is primarily meant to send a deterrent

message to others contemplating a future clandestine crossing.

The same

is true of decisions to repatriate violators to a distant part of the land border

rather than back to the border town from which they entered and where

their coyote may be waiting to help them try again to enter.

To take

another example, in 1994, the Clinton administration decided to decouple

the grant of work authorization from the simple act of filing for asylum, as

had been provided under earlier regulations, though this change would

mean that many applicants would be without a means of support, other than

private or family charity, for as long as 180 days. This austere step was

taken, in significant part, to discourage people planning to come to the

United States to file an ill-founded claim that previously would have

45. See Donald Kerwin & Kristen McCabe, Arrested on Entry: Operation Streamline and

the Prosecution of Immigration Crimes, M

IGRATION POL’Y INST. (Apr. 29, 2010), http:// www.

migrationpolicy.org/article/arrested-entry-operation-streamline-and-prosecution-immgration-cr

imes.

46. E.g., Joanna Lydgate, Assembly-Line Justice: A Review of Operation Streamline,

OL’Y BRIEF, Jan. 2010, at 7, available at https://www.law.berkeley.edu/files/Operation_

Streamline_Policy_Brief.pdf.

47. See Successful Border Program Assures Consequences, HOMELAND SECURITY

NEWSWIRE, Feb. 2011, http://www.homelandsecuritynewswire.com/successful-border-progr

am-ensures-consequences. U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Alan Bersin

explained the strategy imposing more severe consequences as a way to “[l]et the word go

out” to potential future border crossers. Id.; see also Alan D. Bersin & Judith S. Feigin, The

Rule of Law at the Border: Reinventing Prosecution Policy in the Southern District of

California, 12 G

EO. IMMIGR. L. REV. 285 (1998) (describing an earlier administration’s effort

to use prosecution strategically).

48. THOMAS ALEXANDER ALEINIKOFF, DAVID A. MARTIN, HIROSHI MOTOMURA &

MARYELLEN FULLERTON, IMMIGRATION AND CITIZENSHIP: PROCESS AND POLICY 932-41 (7th

ed. 2012); L

ISA SEGHETTI, CONG. RESEARCH SERV., R42138, BORDER SECURITY:

IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT BETWEEN PORTS OF ENTRY 7-12 (2014).

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46 OKLAHOMA LAW REVIEW [Vol. 68:29

secured several years of residence and lawful work while they awaited a

hearing.

Changes to the treatment or opportunities of noncitizens in the United

States, whether in the direction of restriction or liberalization, almost

inevitably affect the decisions of people and organizations abroad who are

thinking about organizing or participating in migration to the United States.

Smuggling organizations, in fact, often build their business plans around

finding and exploiting weak spots in immigration laws or processes.

As a

result, some U.S. government measures take on a more severe or restrictive

aspect than might initially seem to be warranted by the acts of the

individuals most immediately affected. This is because the policymakers

mean the action not just for those who are the direct object of enforcement

on U.S. soil but also for the message sent to others they want to deter. This

dynamic appears to explain, in significant part, the Obama administration’s

decisions to respond to the southwest border migration surge in summer of

2014 with a surprisingly severe set of measures, including sustained

detention, even though the subjects were mainly children traveling with a

mother or other relative. The executive branch also implemented

accelerated removal processing where the law permitted such action, and

assured substantial publicity for the flight whenever recent migrants were

deported by airplane to their home country.

Despite sharp criticism, these

49. See David A. Martin, Making Asylum Policy: The 1994 Reforms, 70 WASH. L. REV.

725 (1995).

50. Peter Andreas, The Transformation of Migrant Smuggling Across the U.S.-Mexico

Border,

in GLOBAL HUMAN SMUGGLING: COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVES 107-22 (David Kyle &

Rey Koslowski eds., 2001).

51. See Julia Preston, Detention Center Presented as Deterrent to Border Crossings, N.Y.

TIMES, Dec. 15, 2014, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/16/us/homeland-security-chief-opens-

largest-immigration-detention-center-in-us.html; Julia Preston, In Remote Detention Center, a

Battle on Fast Deportations, N.Y. TIMES, Sept. 5, 2014, http://www.nytimes.

com/2014/09/06/us/in-remote-detention-center-a-battle-on-fast-deportations.html; M.S.P.C. v.

Johnson, AM. CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION, Jan. 30, 2015, https://www.aclu.org/ immigrants-

rights/mspc-v-johnson (fact sheet on pending litigation). In his November 20, 2014, speech

announcing what was otherwise a wide range of liberalizing immigration measures taken on

the unilateral authority of the executive branch, President Obama somewhat

uncharacteristically emphasized his administration’s successful efforts to stem this flow, as a

sign of his commitment to rigorous border control in the future. See Press Release, The White

House, Remarks by the President in Address to the Nation on Immigration (Nov. 20, 2014),

available at http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/11/20/remarks-president-addre

ss-nation-immigration. I present a more complete analysis of the administration’s reaction to

the 2014 migrant surge in David A. Martin, Resolute Enforcement Is Not Just for

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practices persisted, and they seem to have had much of the desired deterrent

impact in the foreign nations at issue. In fact, monthly arrivals of

unaccompanied minors from these countries declined from 10,631 in June

2014 to 2,432 in September.

This kind of deterrence-based action, focused on overseas individuals

and nongovernmental players, is also an aspect of foreign affairs, even

though it falls below the plane of high-level geopolitics. It likewise may

need to take the form of rough-hewn trial-and-error, like the more

traditional foreign-relations actions directed at governments. The Supreme

Court’s case law over the years appears to consider such policy choices

equally worthy of foreign-affairs deference.

This analysis is not meant as advocacy for the quick or expansive use of

immigration restrictions to respond to objectionable or unwelcome actions

of foreign governments or nonstate actors. For reasons of both policy and

proportion, immigration sanctions of this type should be sparingly

deployed. But the Court’s doctrine of deference in Chae Chan Ping and

later cases is based on the recognition that even for relatively liberal

foreign-affairs decisionmakers, rough-hewn actions that initially seem

outsized or individually unfair might need to be in the mix to respond to, or

to help shape, actions that others are taking abroad.

Restrictionists: Building a Stable and Efficient Immigration Enforcement System, 30 J. L. &

POLITICS 411, 418-24 (2015).

52. See U.S.

BORDER PATROL, TOTAL MONTHLY UNACCOMPANIED ALIEN

APPREHENSIONS BY MONTH, BY SECTOR (FY 2010 – FY 2014), Dec. 19, 2014, http://

www.cbp.gov/sites/default/files/documents/BP%20Total%20Monthly%20UACs%20by%20

Sector%2C%20FY10.-FY14.pdf (indicating that the monthly flow averaged approximately

2,000 in FY 2012 and approximately 3,200 in FY 2013; the flow rose sharply in 2014,

ultimately exceeding 10,000 arrivals in May and June before falling below 2,500 in

September as a result of the executive branch’s policy responses).

53. E.g., I.N.S. v. Aguirre-Aguirre, 526 U.S. 415, 424-25 (1999); Sale v. Haitian

Centers Council, Inc., 509 U.S. 155, 187-88 (1993).

54. President Clinton’s decision to continue across-the-board interdiction of Haitian

migrants when he assumed office, even though he had sharply criticized this policy during his

campaign, provides an illustration. See D

AVID A. MARTIN, THOMAS ALEXANDER ALEINIKOFF,

HIROSHI MOTOMURA, & MARYELLEN FULLERTON, FORCED MIGRATION: LAW AND POLICY 775-

90 (2d ed. 2013). The Supreme Court approved his action on an eight-to-one vote, despite

expressing policy concerns about the harshness of this outcome. Sale v. Haitian Centers

Council, Inc., 509 U.S. 155, 159, 179 (1993). But for Clinton this was not the end of the story.

Uneasiness about the continuation of interdiction, despite the Court’s affirmance of its legality,

contributed to the President’s ultimate decision to use military deployments, under UN Security

Council authority, to oust the Haitian generals and restore the democratically elected president,

Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

MARTIN, et al., supra, at 775-90. For reflections both on the Clinton

experience in Haiti and more generally on the occasional need for rough-hewn policy measures

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48 OKLAHOMA LAW REVIEW [Vol. 68:29

III. Why the Court Resists Even Moderate

Proposals for a More Active Judicial Role

A more nuanced branch of the Chae Chan Ping criticism accepts that

foreign affairs considerations may well be at stake in some immigration

decisions, but would modify the doctrine to allow for a carefully structured

closer judicial look.

The courts, such observers contend, should not take

political branch assertions as controlling, but instead should perform an

initial judicial probe of the asserted reasons, to decide whether the

challenged immigration restriction rests on a significant foreign affairs

foundation. If the answer is yes, then the reviewing court should treat the

political branches’ decision as dispositive — essentially, as a political

question not subject to judicial review. But if not, then the court should

apply ordinary modes of constitutional review, which might well bring a

form of heightened scrutiny.

At first glance, this kind of proposal would seem to offer an attractive

middle ground to the Supreme Court. Yet the Court in practice has

manifested great resistance to these scholarly invitations. Why? In my view,

a majority of the Justices harbor a deep skepticism that lower courts can be

trusted to give sufficient weight to foreign policy concerns in making any

such threshold assessment. The very nature of immigration litigation in the

courts of appeals, with an actual and often sympathetic human being front

and center, makes a reviewing judge far more likely to overvalue the

individual interests at stake and undervalue the more subtle and complex

reasons why a particular measure may be needed for system stability or to

influence behavior beyond our borders — connections that often would not

become fully apparent until broader damage is manifested months or years

after an interventionist judicial decision.

with regard to immigration, see David A. Martin, Interdiction of Asylum Seekers: The Realms

of Policy and Law in Refugee Protection, in Y

ALE LAW SCHOOL SALE SYMPOSIUM (2014),

PINIO JURIS (Mar. 15, 2014), http://opiniojuris.org/2014/03/15/yls-sale-symposium-interdic

tion-asylum-seekers-realms-policy-law-refugee-protection/.

55. Stephen Legomsky led the way to developing and defending this thoughtful

proposal. Legomsky, Immigration Law and the Principle of Plenary Congressional Power,

supra note 2, at 255, 262-63.

56. A revealing example, involving the interplay between the district court and the court

of appeals, is provided by litigation involving Hany Kiareldeen. The district court found due

process violations in the government’s use of secret evidence to keep Kiareldeen in

detention pending final resolution of his deportation case. Kiareldeen v. Reno, 71 F. Supp.

2d 402 (D.N.J. 1999). The government maintained that he was linked to terrorist

organizations. Id. at 404. Eventually the government yielded to the district court’s demands,

dropped its appeal of the initial merits ruling, released Kiareldeen, and ceased its efforts to

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Anna Law’s book, The Immigration Battle in American Courts,

documents this disparity in outlook between the Supreme Court and the

lower courts quite revealingly. She describes “how [lower court] judges can

disregard congressional edicts limiting their scope of review in order to

reach a desired result,”

and can usually get away with it because the

Supreme Court can review only a tiny fraction of their decisions.

Professor Law regards this stance by the courts of appeals as a virtue, but

the Supreme Court doubtless views it otherwise. Keeping the plenary power

doctrine categorical gives the Supreme Court greater assurance that lower

courts will preserve the space needed for government actions to meet real

foreign affairs imperatives (even if this stance inevitably also leaves room

for some ill-motivated actions adopted by the political branches).

If this symposium were being held at the time of Chae Chan Ping’s

centennial, in 1989, we might have had greater reason to expect some

softening by the Supreme Court regarding the deference doctrine in the

foreign affairs arena. Exactly twenty-five years before the week when this

symposium convened in Norman, Oklahoma, the Berlin Wall fell, signaling

that the Soviet bloc was coming apart, about to be replaced, in many

instances, by democratic governments. Lengthy wars were ending in Latin

America, and dictators were being forced from office. It appeared we were

on the cusp of a far more benign world order — one that might permit the

rapid flowering of more protective international legal institutions and

thereby reduce reliance on crude action-and-response in the international

arena.

Today’s global scene is far more grim. Not only has the United States

experienced the trauma of al Qaeda’s September 11 attacks, which revealed

a genuine need for more vigilant immigration screening, but democratic

nations are also facing new global threats from other nongovernmental

actors who actually glorify the use of beheadings, crucifixion, and slavery,

in addition to other players using more old-fashioned forms of terrorism

directed at civilians. Failed states are more common, and well-armed

deport him. Kiareldeen v. Reno, 92 F. Supp. 2d 403, 404-05 (D.N.J. 2000). The district court

then awarded attorney’s fees to Kiareldeen, finding that the government’s position was not

substantially justified. Id. at 409. The government appealed that award. Kiareldeen v.

Ashcroft, 273 F.3d 542 (3d Cir. 2001). The Third Circuit wound up ruling on that ancillary

appeal after the 9/11 terror attacks. Partially in light of the 9/11 experience, the higher court

reversed the award, leveling harsh criticism at the district court’s initial rulings, essentially

for being naïve about the need for secrecy to protect intelligence sources and about the range

of necessary government responses to terrorism. Id. at 555-57.

57. A

NNA O. LAW, THE IMMIGRATION BATTLE IN AMERICAN COURTS 139 (2010).

58. See id. at 126-43, 231-36.

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insurgencies have proliferated. The march of democracy has slowed and, in

several countries, reversed. Climate change and even plague-like diseases

presage more complicated foreign policy challenges, many of which will

have a migration dimension. The risks to the United States, if our

government’s foreign-policy-linked initiatives are unsuccessful, now seem

far higher than in 1989. Thus, I do not foresee the Supreme Court retreating

significantly from the strong deference doctrines derived from Chae Chan

Ping.

IV. The Continuing Relevance of Judicial

Review and of Constitutional Values

The foregoing conclusions about the plenary power doctrine’s

persistence should not be taken as a counsel of despair. To start with, let us

be candid about the significant court role left open even after Chae Chan

Ping. I have spent six years as a government lawyer dealing with

immigration matters, in three different administrations over the course of

thirty-five years. The picture from inside government is not at all one of

agencies taking comfort in a bullet-proof shelter fortified by the plenary

power doctrine and upholstered with judicial deference. The opposite

feeling more often prevails. Courts review thousands of immigration cases

59. If the twenty-first-century Court were ready to make inroads into the plenary power

doctrine, this year’s Kerry v. Din case, 135 S. Ct. 2128 (2015), presented a golden

opportunity, because a sympathetic petitioner there asked for what appeared to be a quite

modest judicial intervention. Nonetheless the majority rejected the claim. Id. at 2138. Din is

a U.S. citizen who had petitioned for the immigration of her husband, an Afghan national.

The consular officer denied an immigrant visa, and the only reason given to Din was a

citation to the broad terrorism ground of inadmissibility. She argued that the due process

clause’s protection of marital rights mandates in these circumstances a more complete

statement of reasons so that she might have a meaningful opportunity to seek

reconsideration. Id. at 2131. The four dissenters would have ruled in her favor, id. at 2141

(Breyer, J., dissenting), while the other five Justices combined to reject the claim. Justice

Scalia, for the three-member plurality, held that the due process clause does not apply

because the government’s action denied Din no constitutionally recognized liberty interest.

Id. at 2138. Of more relevance here, however, was the opinion by Justice Kennedy for

himself and Justice Alito. Id. at 2139. They assumed without deciding that a liberty interest

was involved, but they relied on the exceedingly deferential test announced in the First

Amendment case of Kleindienst v. Mandel, 408 U.S. 753 (1972), to hold that Din received

all the process she was due. Id. at 2139-41. That test requires a court to uphold a visa denial

if it is based on a “facially legitimate and bona fide reason,” Mandel, 408 U.S. at 770

(emphasis added). Kennedy specifically relied on Congress’s plenary power over conditions

of admission in finding that the bare-bones reason given to Din was facially legitimate. Din,

135 S. Ct. at 2139-41 (Kennedy, J., concurring).

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2015] WHY THE PLENARY POWER DOCTRINE ENDURES 51

each year.

Chae Chan Ping imposes no barrier to challenges alleging that

administrative action departed from legal requirements based in statute or

regulation. And, in deportation cases, procedural due process review can be

demanding and significant. The government loses a significant percentage

of these cases.

This give-and-take between the branches provides valuable

checks and balances, particularly on administrative action.

Nonetheless, whatever the perception within the administrative agencies,

aren’t advocates still foreclosed by the plenary power doctrine from

bringing immigration statutes into compliance with modern understandings

of the Constitution? No, for two important reasons. First, although

immigration statutes officially are not subject to constitutional review and

invalidation under the usual understanding of Chae Chan Ping and Fong

Yue Ting, statutory interpretation and application certainly remain part of

judicial duty. In this endeavor, courts frequently employ the doctrine of

constitutional avoidance to implement interpretations that adhere more

closely to constitutional values than what Congress may have intended.

This way of bending measures toward constitutional harmony is not a

new departure for courts. As Lucy Salyer has documented, before the dawn

of the twentieth century the lower federal courts in California countered or

buffered the first decades of anti-Chinese agitation. They issued many

courageous rulings reading state and federal statutes narrowly so as to

minimize intrusions on the rights or interests of the targeted foreigners.

Circuit Judge Lorenzo Sawyer, who decided the Chae Chan Ping case at

the trial level, had participated extensively in that protective judicial

60. For fiscal years 2009 through 2013, the U.S. Courts of Appeals received an average

of nearly 7000 cases annually seeking review of decisions by the Board of Immigration

Appeals (BIA). U.S.

COURTS, TABLE B-3—U.S. COURTS OF APPEALS JUDICIAL BUSINESS 1

(2013), available at http://www.uscourts.gov/uscourts/Statistics/JudicialBusiness/2013/app

endices/B03Sep13.pdf. These statistics do not include other immigration cases that reach the

federal courts, such as challenges to detention and various petitions for injunctive relief,

which are typically filed in the district courts.

61. For example, BIA decisions were reversed by the federal courts of appeals at a rate

of 15.9% in calendar year 2014. John Guendelsberger, Circuit Court Decisions for

December 2014 and Calendar Year 2014 Totals, I

MMIGRATION L. ADVISOR, Jan. 2015, at 5,

available at http://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/eoir/pages/attachments/2015/02/26/vol

9no1final.pdf. Because only the noncitizen may petition the courts for review of a BIA

decision, each of those reversals represents a loss for the government.

62. See, e.g., I.N.S. v. St. Cyr, 533 U.S. 289, 299-300 (2001); Woodby v. I.N.S., 385

U.S. 276, 284 (1966). The classic treatment of this phenomenon is Hiroshi Motomura,

Immigration Law After a Century of Plenary Power: Phantom Constitutional Norms and

Statutory Interpretation, supra note 2.

63. S

ALYER, supra note 22, at 12-13, 18-21.

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process. In his ruling on Chae Chan Ping’s petition he noted, somewhat

ruefully, that he could not achieve a more equitable result this time, owing

to the clarity of the statute and Congress’s (by then) clear intention to

violate the treaties with China. He explained:

We have, heretofore, found it our duty, however unpleasant, at

times, to maintain, fearlessly, and steadily, the rights of Chinese

laborers under our treaties with China, and the acts of congress

passed to carry them out. That we have been right in law, is

established by the fact that our decisions have been affirmed by

the supreme court of the United States on every point of law and

construction of the act that has been raised, or discussed before

us . . . . As we faithfully enforced the laws, as we found them,

when they were in favor of the Chinese laborers, we deem it,

equally, our duty to enforce them in all their parts, now that they

are unfavorable to them. . . . [We also] deem it proper to express

the hope, that, so long as we sit upon the judgment seat, we shall

be endowed with sufficient courage and firmness to administer

honestly, and faithfully, according to its true import, any valid

law . . . . [But it] is not the function of the courts to abrogate an

unsatisfactory law by arbitrarily refusing to enforce it. The only

proper mode of getting rid of such a law, is, for congress to

repeal or modify it.

Judge Sawyer’s closing observation calls attention to a second avenue

for achieving just and constitutional outcomes, one that is more often

overlooked. Courts are not the only venues where one may defend

constitutional values against objectionable statutes. The Chinese Exclusion

Laws disappeared from our code not because a court issued a decree, but

because Congress finally saw fit to repeal them in 1943.

The national

origins quota system ended in 1965 not because the Warren Court struck

them down but because decades of advocacy won that significant victory on

Capitol Hill.

64. In re Chae Chan Ping, 36 F. 431, 436-37 (C.C.N.D. Cal. 1888), aff'd sub nom. Chae

Chan Ping v. United States, 130 U.S. 581 (1889).

65. Magnuson Act, Pub. L. No. 78-199, § 1, 57 Stat. 600 (1943).

66. Hart-Celler Act, Pub. L. No. 89-236, § 2(a), 79 Stat. 911, 911-12 (1965). For rich

accounts, see D

ANIEL TICHENOR, DIVIDING LINES: THE POLITICS OF IMMIGRATION CONTROL

AMERICA 211-16 (2002); ARISTIDE ZOLBERG, A NATION BY DESIGN: IMMIGRATION POLICY

IN THE

FASHIONING OF AMERICA 324-33 (2006).

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2015] WHY THE PLENARY POWER DOCTRINE ENDURES 53

Justice Field may have had in mind something like this nonjudicial

process for defending constitutional values when he penned what otherwise

seems a puzzling passage in Chae Chan Ping, given that the opinion’s main

message is that courts will not entertain a constitutional challenge to

exclusion. After describing and listing foreign-affairs-related powers

(which also include declaring war, making treaties, repelling invasions, and

accepting new citizens), Field adds these words: “[These] are all sovereign

powers, restricted in their exercise only by the constitution itself and

considerations of public policy and justice which control, more or less, the

conduct of all civilized nations.”

Other branches, he suggests, are

primarily responsible for applying the constitutional restrictions and for

making any trade-offs between policy and justice; as a result there will

come times when constitutional principles are honored less, rather than

more. (Perhaps we can even find in Field’s careful words a hint that he

regards the particular treatment of Chae Chan Ping as unjust.) The

assignment of institutional roles for the various branches of government, in

other words, may make for imperfect realization — and perhaps sometimes

for actions out of harmony with constitutional values, properly understood.

But — and this is critical — Field does not see these decisions as somehow

beyond constitutional restriction and certainly not beyond considerations of

public policy and justice.

In his discussion of Chae Chan Ping’s treaty claim, Field gives a further

glimpse of his ideas about how the influence of the Constitution and just

public policy might be brought to bear, even in the absence of judicial

intervention. Speaking of various foreign affairs authorities, including the

war power, Field observes:

This court is not a censor of the morals of other departments of

the government; it is not invested with any authority to pass

judgment upon the motives of their conduct. . . . We do not mean

to intimate that the moral aspects of legislative acts may not be

proper subjects of consideration. Undoubtedly they may be, at

proper times and places, before the public, in the halls of

congress, and in all the modes by which the public mind can be

influenced. Public opinion thus enlightened, brought to bear

upon legislation, will do more than all other causes to prevent

abuses . . . .

67. 130 U.S. at 604 (emphasis added).

68. Id. at 602-03.

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Field illustrates these modes of influence and enlightenment by referring

to the nation’s earlier disputes over the 1846 war against Mexico. There

“the propriety and wisdom and justice of [the government’s] action were

vehemently assailed by some of the ablest and best men in the country.”

This line probably refers, at least in part, to Abraham Lincoln, who assailed

the Mexican war in 1848 as a young congressman, calling it “unnecessarily

and unconstitutionally commenced.”

That constitutional argument

occurred not in the courtroom, but in the halls of Congress.

The half-century struggle against the 1921 national origins quota

system

affords an instructive modern illustration of the phenomenon to

which Field made reference. When Congress passed the Immigration and

Nationality Act in 1952, President Harry Truman vetoed the bill. His veto

message details many flaws in the lengthy statute, but focuses primarily on

the national origins quota system, which Congress had chosen to perpetuate

with only minor changes. Truman’s message repeatedly emphasizes that

such quotas amount to “invidious discrimination,” based on discredited

social theories “at variance with our American ideals”

— clearly invoking

constitutional values. When Congress overrode his veto, Truman appointed

a blue-ribbon commission to critique existing immigration laws and

propose changes. That commission continued the harsh criticism of the

national origins quotas, considering that they (and certain other provisions

of the Act) “flout fundamental American traditions and ideals.”

Although

the courts continued into the 1960s to sustain against constitutional

69. Id. at 629.

70. Representative Abraham Lincoln, Speech on the Mexican War, Speech to Congress

(Jan. 12, 1848), available at http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/mal:@field

(DOCID+@lit(d0007400))#I31; see 30 C

ONG. GLOBE 145, 154-156 (1848) (recording the

congressional account of Mr. Lincoln’s speech). Lincoln was the President who appointed

Stephen Field to the Court, over twenty-five years before the Chae Chan Ping case arose.

See Biographies of the Robes: Stephen Johnson Field, PBS, http://www.pbs.org/wnet/

supremecourt/personality/robes_field.html (last visited June 15, 2015).

71. Emergency Quota Act, Pub. L. No. 67-5, § 2(a), 42 Stat. 5, 5-7 (1921); T

ICHENOR,

supra note 66, at 138-43; Z

OLBERG, supra note 66, at 251-54.

72. Harry S. Truman, Veto of Bill to Revise the Laws Relating to Immigration,

Naturalization, and Nationality, PUB. PAPERS 441 (June 25, 1952); see also TICHENOR, supra

note 66, at 188-99, 211-18 (describing the battles over the national origins quotas in the

1952 Act, the veto, and the aftermath, including success in repealing the quotas in 1965).

73. P

RESIDENT’S COMM’N ON IMMIGRATION AND NATURALIZATION, WHOM WE SHALL

WELCOME xv (1953). For the Commission’s full analysis of and objections to the national

origins quotas, see id. at 83-109.

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2015] WHY THE PLENARY POWER DOCTRINE ENDURES 55

challenge even the most racially discriminatory quota provisions,

a wide

range of advocates and members of Congress kept up the fight against the

quotas, and the struggle finally achieved repeal in 1965.

A similar effort,

invoking First Amendment values, was directed toward the ideological

exclusion provisions,

which had been subjected to the most minimal

judicial scrutiny by the Supreme Court in Kleindienst v. Mandel in 1972.

This effort won success with the major revision of the exclusion provisions

in 1990.

V. Conclusion

Chae Chan Ping should not be taken as a reason to vent anger over

judicial timidity. Instead, it stands as a call to roll up our sleeves and get to

work in the political arena rather than the courts. Accepting that implicit

challenge, we should do more toward training our students in disciplined

policy analysis and broader legislative and regulatory advocacy skills. We

should encourage more of them, and more of our scholarly colleagues, to

take up positions in the immigration agencies and on Capitol Hill.

Taken seriously, that type of engagement will also reveal that turning

constitutional values into precise and workable changes in the immigration

field is far from an easy or automatic process. Subtle but important reasons

for tempering beneficence with prudence are more likely to become

apparent in the arena of politics and governance than in the judicial arena.

Having to deal with tradeoffs and complex objectives, as part of a team that

bears long-term and continuing responsibility for outcomes, can be

educational, in the best sense of the term. The political path to reform is of

course more uncertain, more diffuse, and less precise than a clean

constitutional victory would be in the Supreme Court. The former method

will take longer, and it will doubtless produce many disappointments and

74. E.g., Hitai v. INS, 343 F.2d 466 F.3d (2d Cir. 1965) (sustaining statutory provisions

that attributed descendants of Japanese to the highly restricted Japan quota, even though they

were natives and citizens of Brazil).

75. Hart-Celler Act, Pub. L. No. 89-236, § 2(a), 79 Stat. 911, 911-912 (1965).

76. See, e.g., Scanlan supra note 2; Steven R. Shapiro, Ideological Exclusions: Closing

the Border to Political Dissidents, 100 H

ARV. L. REV. 930 (1987); Alexander Wohl, Free

Speech and the Right of Entry into the United States: Legislation to Remedy the Ideological

Exclusion Provisions of the Immigration and Nationality Act, 4 AM. U. J. INT’L. L. & POL’Y

443 (1989).

77. 408 U.S. 753 (1972).

78. Immigration Act of 1990, Pub. L. No. 101-649, § 601, 104 Stat. 4978, replacing

inter alia, Immigration and Nationality Act, Pub. L. No. 82-414, § 212(a)(28), 66 Stat. 163

(1952)).

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56 OKLAHOMA LAW REVIEW [Vol. 68:29

disputes along the way. But that path has at times produced truly important

results.

In Choruses from The Rock, T.S. Eliot writes disparagingly of those who

“dream[] of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good.”

The

relentless critique of the plenary power doctrine, with its exaggerated

expectations about how judges deploying constitutional law can cure bad

policy and injustice — in the midst of an uncertain, complex, and

dangerous world — partakes of that sort of dream. We need instead to

shoulder the hard responsibility of struggling, collectively, to discern what

is good, and then working to achieve a realistic measure of that vision

through the political process.

79. T.S. Eliot, Choruses from the Rock, in COLLECTED POEMS, 1909-1962, at 160

(1963).

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