A new book entitled Refugee Roulette: Disparities in Asylum
Adjudication
and Proposals for Reform has just been published. This
book might be of
particular interest to IARLJ-members >>>
Here are further details:
Refugee Roulette: Disparities in Asylum
Adjudication and Proposals for Reform
by Jaya Ramji-Nogales (Author), Andrew
Ian Schoenholtz (Author),
Philip G. Schrag (Author)
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Refugee-Roulette-Disparities-Adjudication-Proposals/dp/081474074X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1254909618&sr=1-1
Product
Description
Through the Refugee Act of 1980, the United States offers the
prospect of safety to people who flee to America to escape rape, torture,
and even death in their native countries. In order to be granted asylum,
however, an applicant must prove to an asylum officer or immigration
judge that she has a well-founded fear of persecution in her homeland.
The chance of winning asylum should have little if anything to do with
the personality of the official to whom a case is randomly assigned,
but in a ground-breaking and shocking study, Jaya Ramji-Nogales, Andrew
I. Schoenholtz, and Philip G. Schrag learned that life-or-death asylum
decisions are too frequently influenced by random factors relating to the
decision makers. In many cases, the most important moment in an asylum case
is the instant in which a clerk randomly
assigns the application to an
adjudicator. The system, in its current state, is like a game of chance.
"Refugee Roulette" is the first analysis of decisions at all four levels of
the asylum adjudication process: the Department of Homeland Security, the
immigration courts, the Board of Immigration Appeals, and the United States
Courts of Appeals. The data reveal tremendous disparities in asylum
approval rates, even when different adjudicators in the same office each
considered large numbers of applications from nationals of the same
country. After providing a thorough empirical analysis, the authors
make recommendations for future reform. Original essays by eight
scholars and policy makers then discuss the authors' research and
recommendations. The contributors include: Bruce Einhorn, Steven
Legomsky, Audrey Macklin, M. Margaret McKeown, Allegra McLeod, Carrie
Menkel-Meadow, Margaret Taylor, and Robert Thomas.
Robert Thomas,
School of Law,
University
of Manchester,
Oxford Road,
Manchester M13 9PL
United
Kingdom
Telephone: +44(0)161 275 3583
Email:
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Internet:
http://www.law.manchester.ac.uk/
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