Is There Room for Reason?

Amidst shocking tweets from the White House, shake-ups at the State Department, a disturbing nomination to direct the CIA, and litigation titled Sessions v. California, it can seem that there’s little room for expert analysis and reasonable discourse.  Rule of law?  Human rights?  Common decency?  So last Administration!

Still, law reviews across the country continue to publish reasoned legal analyses in hopes that the madness may one day end, and in that spirit, a new Note in the Harvard Law Review is worth a look for those interested in US human rights and immigration issues.   The article is titled American Courts and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees: A Need for Harmony in the Face of a Refugee Crisis.  Here’s an excerpt from the abstract:

“In order to further the goal of a unified treaty regime and provide a more consistent message to the lower courts — and to people applying for asylum in this country and worldwide — the Supreme Court should adopt a more explicit standard of deference to the UNHCR. This Note argues that the UNHCR’s key role in a treaty regime that Congress elected to join, as well as its substantial expertise in interpreting and implementing the Convention, suggest that U.S. courts should presume the correctness of the UNHCR’s interpretations of text in U.S. law derived directly from the Convention, unless this interpretation clearly conflicts with other domestic law or the UNHCR’s own positions.”