Immigration is Coming! Immigration is Coming!

Uh oh. Is immigration coming to the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit? According to this article in the New York Times, it might be. Or maybe not. People seems upset about the idea. Except for those that proposed it.

Here's the thing, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit spends most of its time on patent cases. The rest is a mix of customs and trade, trademark, claims against the U.S., and certain federal employee complaints. The Senate is contemplating dropping about 12,000 immigration appeals on the Court and expanding it by three judges. The case load for individual judges would jump from 125 to 900.

I don't have much of an opinion on this is, but I think it is interesting. The idea seems to be that these cases are burdening the overloaded regional circuit courts and the Federal Circuit has the capacity to handle additional cases. Another point is that as a single forum, the Federal Circuit would provide a more uniform interpretation of the immigration laws. Of course, I worry that the the very significant increase in cases might delay action in customs and trade cases. The patent bar has apparently expressed a similar concern.

It looks as if Illinois' own Sen. Durbin will move to kill this proposal. We'll have to see. Another interesting question is whether opening discussions regarding the jurisdiction of the Federal Circuit might break open discussions on expanding the jurisdiction of the U.S. Court of International Trade.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

CAFC Decision in Double Invoicing Case

The Federal Circuit has issued a decision on the merits in United States v. Inn Foods, Inc.  There had been a previous decision on jurisdiction, which was followed by a trial at the Court of International Trade and then this appeal on the substance. The initial issue is whether Inn Foods' invoicing practice amounts to fraud.  Inn Foods had been receiving an invoice from growers in Mexico that had a relatively low sales prices on it.  Subsequent to entry, Inn Foods created a second invoice at something more similar to market value, retaining the original invoice number, and paid at that higher amount.   Superficially, this looks like a standard-issue double-invoicing scheme.  But, in the age of reconciliation, is it really more like a provisional pricing mechanism?  It might have been possible to make that argument had Inn Foods adjusted its entries accordingly.  It didn't and the loss of revenue was approximately $624,000.  Based on testimony and evidence indicating both knowl
Read more

Target on Finality

Image
In the last post , about the Federal Circuit’s very important decision on due process and allegations of evasion of antidumping duties, I made a snarky, offhand comment that the government believes “liquidation is magic.” That was in the context of the government arguing that Customs’ liquidation of entries mooted an appeal, thereby taking away the importer’s right to further judicial review. I said that knowing full well that I still needed to write this post summarizing Target Corp. v. United States in which Target made what I want to be a valid and righteous argument that Customs’ improper liquidation of entries at a favorable rate of antidumping duty prevents the Court of International Trade from ordering Customs to collect the legally applicable duties. But it turns out that while liquidation is an important legal step, in at least one unusual circumstance it is not sufficiently powerful to overcome the full force of an Article III court. Understanding this case requires a lot
Read more

CAFC: EAPA Process Really Does Violate Due Process

Image
Hot on the heels of my complaining about how the EAPA law and process is stacked against importers, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has issued an important decision that will have a major impact on how those cases work. If you are unfamiliar with evasion cases under the Enforce and Protect Act and how Customs and Border Protection handles them, go back and look at these two posts: Part 1 , Part 2. Royal Brush Manufacturing, Inc. v. United States , is the decision in an evasion case against Royal Brush involving pencils allegedly transshipped from China through the Philippines. Customs determined that there was evasion of an antidumping duty order based in part on evidence that was not disclosed to Royal. Specifically, Customs sent a representative to the facility in the Philippines to photograph the interior and provide a report. Customs refused to disclose all the photographs to Royal. Moreover, CBP's report concluded that the facility did not have sufficient capacit
Read more