What drives individuals to become immigration attorneys? Although much has been written about what motivates people to become lawyers broadly, little is known about the motivations and backgrounds of immigration attorneys. It has been suggested that immigration attorneys are “cause lawyers,” motivated by a desire to engage in immigration activism, advocacy, and reform. Drawing upon a national study of immigration attorneys conducted during Donald Trump's first presidential term, this paper explores the role of these and other established motivations for practicing law in the immigration context—including law school socialization, economic incentives and working conditions, and the social backgrounds, personal values and identities of lawyers. Interview findings reveal that immigration attorneys are not cause lawyers, at least not as traditionally defined in the sociolegal literature. Implications for the immigration bar and the future of immigration reform are discussed.

Prosecutors are widely acknowledged as playing a pivotal role in determining how criminal cases progress through the justice system. They have been the focus of significant reform efforts, especially in regard to correcting racial disparities. We analyzed 101 interviews with prosecutors in which they discussed their perspectives on racial disparities in the legal system as well as how to address them. Using critical discourse analysis, we identified regular use of five linguistic features: passivization, generic descriptions, claims of ignorance, rhetorical questions, and metacommunication. Together, these linguistic buffering strategies perpetuate colorblind discourses by allowing prosecutors to acknowledge racial disparities in a general and unspecific manner. Prosecutors also shape their own identity in harnessing these strategies. Further, we identified a counter-discourse in prosecutors who instead engaged in highly specific (low buffering) language as an alternative discourse to mainstream prosecutors' race talk. Prosecutors with defense experience were more likely than those without this experience to engage in counter-discourse. We do not find meaningful differences in the race talk of white prosecutors and prosecutors of color, although female prosecutors were more likely to use buffering strategies than male prosecutors. Together, these results have implications for prosecutors' hiring decisions, legal training, and the potential for a more global shift in racial ideology away from colorblindness and toward racial consciousness.

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Media and public discourse perpetuate the myth that immigrants—particularly those from Latin America and the undocumented—are crime-prone. Numerous empirical studies refute this. Fewer studies examine how Latinx communities internalize these faulty associations, or how they perceive criminality of other Latinx people. We address two research questions: How do first- and second-generation Latinx individuals conceptualize immigration-related offenses (e.g., driving without a license or working without authorization) in relation to criminality? How do they view their own law-breaking behavior and that of other first- and second-generation Latinx people? To answer these questions, we analyze data from focus groups in a diverse South Florida community with a large indigenous Guatemalan-Maya population. We find participants’ framing of their own immigration-related offenses, like working without authorization or driving without a license, can be understood through the lens of techniques of neutralization. We also find participants exhibited a unique “immigrant legal consciousness” in which immigration-related law-breaking is distinct from “mainstream” state-centered definitions of criminal behavior.

Journal Article Review of “A Story to Save Your Life: Communication and Culture in Migrants’ Search for Asylum” Get access By Sarah C. Bishop Columbia University Press, 2022, 280 pages. https://cup.columbia.edu/book/a-story-to-save-your-life/9780231204095 Hillary Mellinger Hillary Mellinger Washington State University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Social Forces, Volume 102, Issue 1, September 2023, Page e3, https://doi.org/10.1093/sf/soad016 Published: 07 February 2023 Article history Received: 15 January 2023 Accepted: 19 January 2023 Published: 07 February 2023

In this paper, we review and analyze the criminal justice-related decisions of the 2021 term of the United States Supreme Court. We also provide a summary of the Court's voting patterns and opinion authorship. 18 of the Court's 58 decisions touched on criminal justice. There were significant decisions involving the Second Amendment, the Eighth Amendment, and federal criminal statutes. Each of these is discussed in turn.

The United States requires asylum applicants to bring their own interpreters to the Asylum Office. However, asylum officers have discretion to provide interpreters in extraordinary circumstances. When do asylum officers exercise this discretion? Is it exercised uniformly? How do interpreters affect interview dynamics? To explore these questions, I conducted 28 attorney interviews. Interviewees reported that asylum officers inconsistently exercised discretion and provided unaccompanied children with interpreters more often than adults. Interviewees noted that some bilingual officers conducted interviews in a language other than English, and some interpreters exacerbated communication challenges. Since the Asylum Office does not collect interpretation data, this study provides a glimpse into interpretation challenges.

Quantitative studies emphasize a positive relationship between legal representation and asylum case outcomes but are stymied by potential case-selection bias. Moreover, few studies address whether an attorney's quality level might affect case outcomes or how high-quality representation should be conceptualized. The present study informs this literature by drawing on 28 interviews with immigration attorneys who practice before the Asylum Office. It finds that most interviewees accept challenging asylum cases and share a "big picture" understanding of what high-quality representation should entail. However, interviewees differ in their approach to declaration writing and their perceptions of the quality level of the private bar.

We are in the midst of a crisis of mental health for attorneys across all practice areas. Illustrating this broader phenomenon, this interdisciplinary article shares the results of the 2020 National Asylum Attorney Burnout and Secondary Traumatic Stress Survey. Using well-established tools (the Copenhagen Burnout Inventory and the Secondary Stress Trauma Survey), the Survey assessed the well-being of over 700 immigration attorneys navigating the tumultuous asylum space. As the first study of its kind regarding U.S. immigration lawyers and the largest study of U.S. attorneys to date, it is particularly timely. Between 2017-2021, the Trump Administration’s extreme policies, sweeping regulatory changes, and Attorney General decisions catapulted immigration law practice into the public spotlight and created deeper dimensions of stress in an already dysfunctional system intent on re-traumatizing asylum seekers. The Survey findings include much higher self-reported symptoms of burnout and secondary traumatic stress among asylum attorneys than previously surveyed populations, including immigration judges, social workers, hospital doctors, nurses, and prison wardens. In addition, female-identifying attorneys, attorneys of color, and solo practitioners reported higher symptoms of burnout and secondary traumatic stress. This piece explores the inherently traumatic nature of asylum-seeking and asylum-lawyering, briefly touching on the ever-changing landscape of asylum law and policy. In doing so, the article considers specifically how these changes impact asylum attorneys, as one subset of immigration attorneys and indeed of attorneys exposed to trauma. We contribute to the literature around trauma stewardship and a need for self-care, institutional care, and proactive measures to support those joining and continuing in the field. Further, the article provides data to inform funders and other stakeholders about the need for support managing trauma exposure and to normalize a culture of openly discussing burnout and secondary trauma within law school settings, non-profits, government agencies, and law firms. Ultimately, this article argues for a fundamental shift in legal education and the legal profession more broadly in terms of how we think, talk, and teach about the psychological realities of lawyering.

Purpose There remain several underaddressed issues in the procedural justice literature. The authors draw from a rich body of psychological research on how the sociopolitical orientation to group inequality influences individual views on government and apply this to perceptions of procedural justice. Design/methodology/approach This study uses a laboratory-style experimental design to examine the extent to which social dominance orientation (SDO) shapes how people view the language of law enforcement. Four treatments are tested: procedural justice, rapport, deference, and direct. Findings The authors find that, overall, exclusively emphasizing rapport – as opposed to procedural justice, deference, or directness – is not beneficial to fostering positive perceptions of police. Additionally, a higher SDO score is associated with lower perceptions of officer respect in the video and regardless of condition. Finally, while higher SDO score is correlated with greater trust in police (both a specific officer and the police in general), it is also associated with a lower sense of obligation to obey both the officer in the video and the police as an institution. Further, procedural justice or direct communication styles can attenuate the negative impact of SDO on views of police better than rapport or deference communication styles. Thus, the picture that emerges from this research is more nuanced than a straightforward relationship between SDO and support for police. Originality/value This study used an experimental design to examine for the first time the role that a sociopolitical orientation may play in procedural justice theory. While research finds strong links between procedural justice and increased cooperation with police, obligation to obey, and trust in police, few studies have delved into the individual-level factors that research has yet to delve into whether sociopolitical orientation may play a role in informing police actions and communication training.