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109 Nw. U. L. Rev. 933 (2014-2015)
Remote Adjudication in Immigration

handle is hein.journals/illlr109 and id is 955 raw text is: Copyright 2015 by Ingrid V. Eagly Printed in U.S.A. Vol 109, No. 4 REMOTE ADJUDICATION IN IMMIGRATION Ingrid V. Eagly ABSTRACT-This Article reports the findings of the first empirical study of the use of televideo technology to remotely adjudicate the immigration cases of litigants held in detention centers in the United States. Comparing the outcomes of televideo and in-person cases in federal immigration courts, it reveals an outcome paradox: detained televideo litigants were more likely than detained in-person litigants to be deported, but judges did not deny respondents' claims in televideo cases at higher rates. Instead, these inferior results were associated with the fact that detained litigants assigned to televideo courtrooms exhibited depressed engagement with the adversarial process-they were less likely to retain counsel, apply to remain lawfully in the United States, or seek an immigration benefit known as voluntary departure. Drawing on interviews of stakeholders and court observations from the highest-volume detained immigration courts in the country, this Article advances several explanations for why televideo litigants might be less likely than other detained litigants to take advantage of procedures that could help them. These reasons include litigants' perception that televideo is unfair and illegitimate, technical challenges in litigating claims over a screen, remote litigants' lower quality interactions with other courtroom actors, and the exclusion of a public audience from the remote courtroom. This Article's findings begin an important conversation about technology's threat to meaningful litigant participation in the adversarial process. Author-Professor of Law, UCLA School of Law. I am indebted to Joseph Doherty and Susan Long for their guidance, and to Steven Shafer for his assistance coding the immigration court data presented in this Article. Ahilan Arulanantham, Mario Barnes, Lenni Benson, Sam Bray, Linus Chan, Scott Cummings, Sharon Dolovich, Alice Eagly, Laura G6mez, David Hausman, Geoffrey Heeren, C6sar Garcia Hernndez, Jill Horwitz, Dan Kesselbrenner, Jennifer Koh, Jennifer Laurin, Julia Mass, Jennifer Mnookin, Hiroshi Motomura, Jason Oh, Jaya Ramji-Nogales, Emily Ryo, Steven Schulman, Joanna Schwartz, Juliet Stumpf, Yolanda Vdzquez, Beth Werlin, and Jordan Woods gave helpful feedback. Funding for this study was generously provided by a grant from the Hellman Fellows Program. Alexandra Grady-Reitan, Dan Lahana, Ivan Waggoner, and Danielle Weiss provided excellent research assistance.

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