Contesting Immigration Policy in Court. Legal Activism and Its Radiating Effects in the United States and France. By Leila Kawar. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2015*.

Contesting Immigration Policy in Court. Legal Activism and Its Radiating Effects in the United States and France. By Leila Kawar. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2015·.Leila Kawar has published a thoughtful, well-researched and at times provocative comparison of immigration-related litigation in France and the United States. She analyzes the radiating effects of such litigation on immigration policy in both countries, and thus critiques the litigation efforts of lawyers who try to shape such policy. Such an approach is particularly welcome now, as executive orders and other policy pronouncements limiting immigrant and refugee rights in the United States, as well as the resurgence of nationalist sentiment in numerous countries, will likely lead to an increase in immigration-related litigation and other forms of legal advocacy for the foreseeable future.Lawyers and other immigration advocates typically-and out of necessity-focus exclusively on the here and now, and on the country in which they operate. Kawar's book places their work in historical and comparative perspective, and in doing so sheds light on the question of how we got here. It will help lawyers, as well as sociolegal scholars, understand why the everyday battles over immigration policy are often about seemingly trivial details related to one's immigration status. This might provide some comfort, or at least an explanation, to those cause lawyers who pursue immigration advocacy because they want to help bring about significant social change and feel frustrated by the minutia of much immigration law practice.Kawar's book covers a range of important issues, including the interaction between rights-based litigation and social movements, how constitutional court dialogue about rights can have a strong influence on policymaking, and how globalization has not necessarily led to a homogenization of legal contestation. And from a methodological perspective, she offers creative insight into the contributions that non-native researchers can bring to empirical research.Kawar's methodological approach is rigorous and thorough. Over a period of seven years, she conducted voluminous archival research (including media reports) and interviewed numerous key actors in the immigrant rights legal community and jurists in each country. Kawar is transparent in acknowledging the difficulties inherent in doing this kind of study across national borders, especially within different legal systems. She is careful not to fall into the trap of making assumptions about a particular legal system, and the lawyers who populate it, based on the system with which she is most familiar (i.e., the United States). She is sensitive to distinctions in legal cultures, and how they affect both participants and observers. Kawar also avoids tortured comparisons between the United States and French legal systems; where appropriate, she acknowledges the differences and leaves them be.One of Kawar's qualitative empirical methods that was particularly impressive is her idea of eliciting "snapshots of significance" from her interviewees. This approach conveys a lack of agenda or assumptions on the part of the researcher; on the contrary, it turns the interview over to the interviewee from the start. As Kawar notes, requests for such snapshots often elicit the longest pause between question and answer in an interview-which, from an empirical research perspective, is generally a good thing.On substance, Kawar notes that litigation has had relatively little influence over immigration policy over the past several decades. This is a well-taken critique, especially when one considers the significance of several U.S. Supreme Court decisions in other eras, most notably the late nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries, which coincided with the spike in labor-based immigration to the American West following the Gold Rush, and concern about foreign influence during World War II and the Cold War, respectively. …