▲ top
US
US
Indybay
Indybay
protest cheer
indybay menu
category menu
publish menu
Indybay
Regions
Indybay Regions North Coast Central Valley North Bay East Bay South Bay San Francisco Peninsula Santa Cruz IMC - Independent Media Center for the Monterey Bay Area North Coast Central Valley North Bay East Bay South Bay San Francisco Peninsula Santa Cruz IMC - Independent Media Center for the Monterey Bay Area California United States International Americas Haiti Iraq Palestine Afghanistan
Topics
Newswire
Features
Home
About
Contact
Subscribe
Calendar
Publish
Donate
From the Open-Publishing Calendar
From the Open-Publishing Newswire
Indybay Feature
U.S. Immigrant Rights Police State & Prisons

Attorney General To Reconsider Rules Protecting Immigrants From Lawyers' Mistakes

by via ACLU
Tue, Oct 7, 2008 7:37PM
Tuesday, October 7, 2008 : NEW YORK – In a radical departure from years of legal precedent, Attorney General Michael Mukasey is considering ending the practice of allowing immigrants to reopen cases that they lost because of their lawyers' mistakes or incompetence. Mukasey announced that he was considering the issue late this summer and then imposed the unrealistic deadline of October 6 for interested parties to submit briefs, preventing organizations opposing the change, including the American Civil Liberties Union and the American Bar Association (ABA), from providing a meaningful response.
"It is remarkable that the attorney general would refuse to give the legal community sufficient time to respond to a change that would so dramatically break from fairness and due process," said ACLU Immigrants' Rights Project Deputy Director Lee Gelernt. "There is absolutely no reason why the justice system should penalize anyone, including immigrants, for the harm done by incompetent or unscrupulous attorneys."

On August 7, Mukasey instructed that any briefs responding to the proposed reversal of the "ineffective assistance" right be submitted by Sept. 15. After many organizations and lawyers protested that this provided insufficient time to respond to such major legal and policy issues, he extended the deadline a scant three more weeks.  

Though the U.S. Department of Justice has also proposed new rules that would give the department more latitude to punish incompetent immigration lawyers, organizations from the entire range of the political spectrum say that penalizing attorneys is not a substitute for the right to competent counsel.

Read More
For more information: http://www.aclu.org/immigrants/gen/37063pr...
Support Independent Media
We are 100% volunteer and depend on your participation to sustain our efforts!

Donate

$140.00 donated
in the past month

Get Involved

If you'd like to help with maintaining or developing the website, contact us.

Publish

Publish your stories and upcoming events on Indybay.

Regions
North Coast
Central Valley
North Bay
East Bay
South Bay
San Francisco
Peninsula
Santa Cruz
California
International
Topics
Animal Lib
Anti-War
Arts + Action
Drug War
Education
En Español
Environment
Global Justice
Government
Health/Housing
Media
Labor
LGBTI / Queer
Racial Justice
Womyn
International
Americas
Haiti
Iraq
Palestine
Afghanistan
More
FAQ
Make Media
Get Involved
Photo Gallery
Feature Archives
Fault Lines
Links
Search Indybay's Archives
Advanced Search
► ▼ IMC Network
© 2000–2026 San Francisco Bay Area Independent Media Center. Unless otherwise stated by the author, all content is free for non-commercial reuse, reprint, and rebroadcast, on the net and elsewhere. Opinions are those of the contributors and are not necessarily endorsed by the SF Bay Area IMC.
Disclaimer | Copyright Policy | Privacy | Contact | Source Code