Oh, and apparently if an immigration judge adheres to due process and procedural regularity, and gives time-intensive cases the time that they require, they're just lazy and insufficiently "professional," failing to remember that their job is "not a 9-to-5 one." 11/
You know what's not "professional," Beauregard? Interfering with the independence and integrity of immigration courts. Immigration judges are not your "mass deportation agents," to borrow @AvidehNILC's characterization of your actions and attitude. 12/
"Cases must be moved to conclusion"—Translation: be "imaginative and "inventive" in finding ways to put people on a deportation conveyor belt as quickly as possible, without regard to the strength and merit of their legal claims or the need for full and fair hearings. 13/
None of what Sessions says in this speech is surprising or even particularly new from him at this point—his commitment to lawlessness in immigration enforcement and agency adjudication has been pretty clear for a long while. 14/
Still, it is particularly jarring and troubling to see Sessions engage in his Immigration Judge Dredd shtick in front of an audience of brand new immigration judges themselves. Imagine the chilling effect on their decision-making. 15/
As @steve_vladeck noted last month, a key question remains whether federal judges will eventually push back when challenges to what is happening in immigration courts under Sessions make their way into Article III courts. 16/
When the rule of law in immigration adjudication was severely tested under Bush, a number of federal judges did push back. This time, Republicans are rapidly cramming the courts with #TrumpJudges who may well end up faithfully supporting Trump's anti-immigration agenda. 17/
Also from Sessions's speech to new IJs: "The American people are good and just. They rightly want a lawful system they can be proud of." Pretty sure that a system in which refugee kids are abducted from their parents and thrown in baby jail doesn't fit the bill. 18/
"If we expect judges to reach conclusions based solely on reliable evidence, Kavanaugh’s savage and bitter attack demonstrated exactly the opposite sensibility."
A 5-4 right-wing majority—installed mostly by minority popular vote presidents, in the face of solid progressive majorities throttled using illegitimate means—does not "perfectly reflect" anything. To the contrary, it is a starkly imperfect reflection of where we are politically.
Partial credit to @adamliptak for this shade at the end of the piece, but it's far too mild in relation to the actual scale of the Court's legitimacy crisis.
"We have differing views about the other qualifications of Judge Kavanaugh. But we are united, as professors of law and scholars of judicial institutions, in believing that [he] did not display the impartiality and judicial temperament requisite to sit on the highest court"
Over 900 signatories and counting, from over 150 law schools, as of this morning. lawprofessor.net