Under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), individuals can request certain agency records, including mug shots, from federal agencies. Until 1996, the policy of the United States Marshals Service (USMS) was to use FOIA’s broad law enforcement exemption, Exemption 7(C), to deny requests for mug shots. However, in 1996, the Sixth Circuit in Detroit Free Press v. Department of Justice found that a mug shot does not implicate...
Vol. 113
The scope of the President’s legal authority is determined in part by historical practice. This Essay aims to better understand how such practice-based law might operate as a constraint on the presidency. In part because of the limited availability of judicial review in this area, some commentators have suggested that presidential authority has become “unbounded” by law and is now governed only or primarily by politics. At the same...
The Immigration and Nationality Act contains a provision, commonly referred to as the “persecutor bar” or “persecution of others bar,” which prohibits granting asylum to an alien who, although otherwise meeting the criteria for asylum, is determined to have been a “persecutor” in her native country. Use of the persecutor bar by the Board of Immigration Appeals and circuit courts leads to situations of legal complexity because...