Court Opinion

ID: 9421055
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:56:49.953339+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:28.383181
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Jackson,
whom Mr. Justice Reed, Mr. Justice Burton, and Mr. Justice Minton join, dissenting.
We feel constrained to dissent from the legal doctrine being announced. The doctrine seems proof of the adage that hard cases make bad law.
Peculiarities which distinguish this administrative decision from others we have held judicially revie wable must be borne in mind. The hearings questioned here as to their fairness were not hearings on which an order *269of deportation was based and which, under some limitations, may be tested by habeas corpus. Ekiu v. United States, 142 U. S. 651. Neither is this a case involving questioned personal status, as whether one is eligible for citizenship, which we have held reviewable under procedures for declaratory judgment and injunction. McGrath v. Kristensen, 340 U. S. 162. Petitioner admittedly is in this country illegally and does not question his deportability or the validity of the order to deport him. The hearings in question relate only to whether carrying out an entirely legal deportation order is to be suspended.
Congress vested in the Attorney General, and in him alone, discretion as to whether to suspend deportation under certain circumstances. We think a refusal to exercise that discretion is not reviewable on habeas corpus, first, because the nature of the power and discretion vested in the Attorney General is analogous to the power of pardon or commutation of a sentence, which we trust no one thinks is subject to judicial control; and second, because no legal right exists in petitioner by virtue of constitution, statute or common law to have a lawful order of deportation suspended. Even if petitioner proves himself eligible for suspension, that gives him no right to it as a matter of law but merely establishes a condition precedent to exercise of discretion by the Attorney General. Habeas corpus is to enforce legal rights, not to transfer to the courts control of executive discretion.
The ground for judicial interference here seems to be that the Board of Immigration Appeals did find, or may have found, against suspension on instructions from the Attorney General. Even so, this Board is neither a judicial body nor an independent agency. It is created by the Attorney General as part of his office, he names its members, and they are responsible only to him. It operates under his supervision and direction, and its every *270decision is subject to his unlimited review and revision. The refusal to suspend deportation, no matter which subordinate officer actually makes it, is in law the Attorney General’s decision. We do not think its validity can be impeached by showing that he overinfluenced members of his own staff whose opinion in any event would be only advisory.
The Court appears to be of the belief that habeas corpus will issue to review a decision by the Board. It is treating the Attorney General’s regulations as if they vested in the Board final authority to exercise his discretion. But, in our view, the statute neither contemplates nor tolerates a redelegation of his discretion by the Attorney General so as to make the decision of the Board, even if left standing by him, final in the sense of being subject to judicial review as the Board’s own decision. Even the Attorney General was not entrusted with this discretion free of all congressional control, for Congress specifically reserved to itself power to overrule his acts of grace. 54 Stat. 672, 8 U. S. C. (1946) § 155 (c), as amended, 8 U. S. C. (Supp. V) § 155 (c). It overtaxes our naivete about politics to believe Congress would entrust the power to a board which is not the creature of Congress and whose members are not subject to Senate confirmation.
Cases challenging deportation orders, such as Bridges v. Wixon, 326 U. S. 135, whatever their merits or demerits, have no application here. In cases where the question is the validity of a deportation order, habeas corpus will issue at least to review jurisdictional questions. In those cases, also, the petitioner has a legal right to assert, viz., a private right not to be deported except upon grounds prescribed by Congress. Neither the validity of deportation nor a private right is involved here.
*271Of course, it may be thought that it would be better government if even executive acts of grace were subject to judicial review. But the process of the Court seems adapted only to the determination of legal rights, and here the decision, is thrusting upon the courts the task of reviewing a discretionary and purely executive function. Habeas corpus, like the currency, can be debased by over-issue quite as certainly as by too niggardly use. We would affirm and leave the responsibility for suspension or execution of this deportation squarely on the Attorney General, where Congress has put it.