Leal-Rodriguez v. Immigration & Naturalization Service’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

41 federal appellate ·

Most-quoted passages

The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 76 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “We will not bind the BIA with a single non-precedential, unpublished decision any more than we ourselves are bound by our own unpublished orders.”

   5 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Davila-Bardales v. INS · De-Ning Luo v. Reno

2. “[a]liens lawfully admitted for permanent residence who temporarily proceeded abroad voluntarily and not under an order of deportation, and who are returning to a lawful unrelinquished domicile of seven consecutive years, may be admitted in the discretion of the Attorney General without regard to”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissent
   e.g. Cortes-Castillo v. Immigration & Naturalization Service · Farquharson v. U.S. Attorney General

3. “[T]he combined effect of § 212(c) and the interpretation in Francis and its aftermath, is to create an untidy patchwork, even, one might say, a mess. It is hard to imagine that a congressman or senator who thought about the matter would be pleased with the present state of affairs. But we think the most propitious means of improvement lies with Congress. Further speculative tinkering by courts with a statute that says one thing but is supposed to mean another will likely as not result in even more confusion. Courts have no license to rewrite legislation merely because it is poorly framed. While most legislators might agree that the present state of affairs is undesirable, all would not agree on what steps to take to reform it. Courts are not the proper bodies to take on such tasks. ****** To be sure, when to avoid perceived equal protection problems the statute was stretched beyond its language to apply to deportation proceedings, problems crept in. If impatience with the legislative language had not resulted in adding nonexistent provisions to the statute in the first place, Congress would likely have recognized the defects and long ago repaired any problems at the instance of the Attorney General, the INS and those concerned with the welfare of resident aliens. The question now becomes whether to engage in a second judicial rewriting of the statute in order to improve upon the first rewriting. This would be legislation pure and simple. As a starting point, there is not even”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Powell v. Jennifer