Sara Heridia. “Finding Echoes: Judicial Behavior Among Judges with Family Immigration Histories.” (Accepted at PRQ) Download paper. Download appendix.
Abstract:
In immigration courts, judges make critical decisions on the fates of immigrants to remain in the U.S. Scholars know little about the behaviors of political actors with immigrant identities. While judicial research suggests that judges with these backgrounds will make decisions favorable to immigrants, I argue that the lack of independence in these courts undermines these claims. I collect an original dataset on judge backgrounds and analyze two consequential immigration decisions: the granting of continuances and relief decisions from deportation. I find that with discretion judges with immigrant backgrounds will be more likely to grant continuances. In contrast to previous findings in judicial politics, without discretion the connection between their identity and outcomes becomes insignificant. I provide a novel focus on how immigrant identities can affect judicial behavior and a novel institutional explanation for the relationship between judge identities and law.
Alexander Bolton and Sara Heridia. “Political Control Through Hiring: Evidence from U.S. Administrative Law Judges.” (under review) Download paper. Download appendix.
Abstract:
We examine whether political factors play a role in the hiring of administrative law judges (ALJs). While agencies can select ALJs who undergo a merit-based competitive hiring process, most hire judges from the Social Security Administration (SSA). Selecting from this group of individuals may allow agencies to bypass nonpolitical selection processes and ideologically screen ALJ candidates. To assess this possibility, we create a new dataset combining ALJ disposition data and federal personnel records and compare the behavior of judges who have transferred agencies and those who have not. We find recipient agencies are more likely to hire judges with less generous disposition records, particularly during Republican administrations. This suggests, at the margins, agencies hire judges who conform to their policy objectives. These findings highlight how agencies strategically hire to advance their policy preferences and illuminate concerns about the independence of judges in bureaucratic contexts.
Sara Heridia and Matthew Martin. “When Experience Meets Environment: Professional Backgrounds, Court Composition, and Decision-Making in Immigration Court.” Download paper.
Abstract:
Research on judicial behavior has long recognized that professional backgrounds shape decision-making, but often treats these effects as uniform across institutional contexts. Focusing on U.S. immigration courts, we argue that understanding how professional experience influences judges requires attention to the specificity of prior socialization and the courts where judges currently sit. Analyzing more than 500,000 decisions by 502 immigration judges from 2015–2018, we disaggregate backgrounds by domain and examine how court composition moderates individual effects. Immigration-specific experience matters: former ICE attorneys grant relief at lower rates than other prosecutors; nonprofit immigration defense attorneys grant at higher rates than other defense attorneys. These background effects, however, are conditional on context — they are most pronounced in professionally heterogeneous courts and attenuate in prosecutor-dominated courts, where local norms absorb or suppress prior socialization. Professional background shapes judicial heuristics, but institutional environment determines whether those heuristics distinguish judges from their peers.
Sara Heridia. “Loyalty, Competency, and Diversity: Judicial Selection of U.S. Immigration Judges.”
Abstract:
Abstract publicly available pending completion of interviews.
Sara Heridia. “Race, Immigration, and Judicial Behavior.”
Abstract:
Immigration judges determine whether noncitizens may remain in the United States or face deportation. Prior research suggests that judges with immigrant backgrounds are more likely to make decisions that benefit immigrants, but most studies conceptualize identity as independent demographic categories rather than examining how identities intersect. I argue that the influence of immigrant background on judicial decision-making depends on how immigrant identity interacts with race within the racial hierarchy of the United States. Drawing on theories of racialized immigrant incorporation and social identity, I develop expectations for how judges with different racial–immigrant identities adjudicate immigration cases. I test these expectations using administrative data on immigration judge adjudication between 2015 and 2018. The results demonstrate that immigrant background does not produce uniform patterns of judicial behavior. Asian judges with immigrant backgrounds are more likely to exhibit permissive decision-making, especially in cases involving noncitizens with shared origins. Latinx judges with immigrant backgrounds display more conditional patterns: their engagement in permissive decision-making depends on the type of case and their decisions in shared origin cases vary. Taken together, these findings show that identity shapes judicial behavior through multiple pathways that vary across groups and contexts.
