Supreme Court hears arguments on immigration, diversity jurisdiction

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Supreme Court hears arguments on immigration, diversity jurisdiction

Jaclyn Belczyk | JURIST Executive Editor

November 10, 2009 04:06:00 pm

[JURIST] The US Supreme Court [official website; JURIST news archive] heard oral arguments [day call, PDF; merit briefs] Tuesday in two cases. In Kucana v. Holder [oral arguments transcript, PDF; JURIST report], the Court heard arguments on whether a federal statute [8 USC § 1252(a)(2)(B)(ii) text] gives federal courts jurisdiction to review rulings on motions to reopen decisions by the Board of Immigration Appeals [DOJ backgrounder]. The US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit held [opinion, PDF] that it lacked jurisdiction to review petitioner Agron Kucana's claim. Counsel for the petitioner argued:

Congress did not express any intent to remove the Court's jurisdiction to review discretionary decisions, the authority for which is specified under any other subchapter or in regulations, nor did Congress express any intent to delegate its constitutional responsibility to determine Federal jurisdiction to the Attorney General.

Counsel for the respondent, the US government, argued in support of the petitioner that the Seventh Circuit had jurisdiction to review the case: "The statute at issue does not bar judicial review of denials of motions to reopen." Amicus curiae counsel was appointed to defend the decision below: "The plain language of the act strictly limits Federal court jurisdiction to review the discretionary decisions of immigration officials. In fact, as this Court has explained, the theme of the legislation was to protect the Attorney General's discretion from the courts."

In Hertz Corporation v. Friend [oral arguments transcript, PDF; JURIST report], the Court heard arguments on the correct standard for determining a principal place of business for the purposes of diversity jurisdiction [USCourts backgrounder]. Federal law [28 USC § 1332 text] stipulates that "a corporation shall be deemed to be a citizen of any State by which it has been incorporated and of the State where it has its principal place of business." There is a circuit split as to the proper test to apply. The appeal comes from a US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruling [opinion, PDF] affirming the district court's application of the "place of operations" test, which looks to the location of the corporation's business activities and only considers its "nerve center" if the activities do not substantially predominate in any one state. Counsel for the petitioner argued:

The better reading of the statute, in our view, is that it points to the location of the corporation's headquarters, the site from which a corporation directs and controls all the company's operations throughout all of its locations. And that is particularly the correct reading when the statutory language is considered in light of two considerations.

Counsel for the respondents argued:

For 50 years every circuit save the – save the Seventh had agreed – has agreed on one overriding principle: That courts must perform a balancing in determining the principal place of business of a corporation, and that balancing must include a determination of where the corporation's people and property are.

Counsel argued that the Ninth Circuit had appropriately performed such a balancing test.

Martin Luther King Jr. wrote his Letter from Birmingham Jail

On April 16, 1963, an incarcerated Martin Luther King, Jr. (arrested for demonstrating in defiance of a court order) wrote his Letter from Birmingham Jail in response to a published statement by eight fellow clergymen from Alabama.

Part of the letter read: We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we stiff creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging dark of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son who is asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross-county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger," your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness" then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience. Read the full text of the Letter.