back

by kristjansson·1y ago·view on hn ↗
He had several days in court over four years, in the sort of venue specified by the visa program he took advantage of. Administrative courts are still adversarial courts where all the normal civil procedure rules apply.
2 comments
Right, the article isn't very clear. I would assume that the 7th amendment to a jury trial would apply here, but it is unclear if he was denied this right or chose not to try assert it until after he ran out administrative appeal options.
The government's motion (that Reason, to their credit, link in the first paragraph) is much more helpful on the actual case.

In this case, the answer is kinda both. Administrative law stuff like this can be heard without violating the seventh amendment under the two-part test cited in I.A (which was affirmed by a 2024 decision), and I.B points out that he implicitly consented by litigating in front of the ALJ for four years (and that implicit consent has been upheld as consent to avoid exactly this kind of gamesmanship).

Does procedure really matter when the judge is employed by the same agency as the prosecutor? We've seen how administrative courts work in practice for immigration; this doesn't seem any different.