Munley's World - Part 1

I’ve been reading Judge Munley’s ruling that denies Hazleton PA the right to protect itself from the influx of illegal aliens. It is an interesting read. I would like to take a couple of blogs to explain the world Munley lives in.

At the end of his 206 page ruling Munley includes 13 pages of source material. This should be helpful to the Appeals Court as they try to figure out where he is coming from.

Interestingly, his source material isn’t case law or statute. Here’s what Munley read in preparation for his decision, as he quotes extensively in his Appendix:
JOHN HIGHAM, Strangers in the land: Patterns of American Nativism
SUCHENG CHAN,European and Asian Immigration into the United States in Comparative
Perspective, 1820s to 1920s
VIRGINIA YANS-McLAUGHLIN, Immigration Reconsidered: History, Sociology and Politics
MAE M. NGAI, Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America
KITTY CALAVITA, The Paradoxes of Race, Class, Identity, and “Passing”: Enforcing the Chinese Exclusion Acts, 1882-1910
RONALD TAKAKI, Strangers from a Different Shore
MAE NGAI, The Lost Immigration Debate: Border Control Didn’t Always Dictate Policy
DANIEL KANSTROOM, United States Immigration Policy at the Millenium: Deportation, Social Control, and Punishment: Some Thoughts About Why Hard Laws Make Bad Cases
PATRICIA A. SEITH, Escaping Domestic Violence: Asylum as a Means of Protection for
Battered Women
GLORIA SANDRINO-GLASSER, Los Confundidos: De-Conflating Latinos/as’ Race and Ethnicity
LENNI B. BENSON, Back to the Future: Congress Attacks the Right to Judicial Review of Immigration Proceedings
GERALD L. NEUMAN, Symposium: Admissions and Denials: A Dialogic Introduction to the
Immigration Law Symposium
PETER J. SPIRO, Learning to Live with Immigration Federalism
ARISTIDE R. ZOLBERG, Reforming the Back Door: The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 in Historical Perspective

Two thoughts about the appropriateness of this material:
1) Methinks Judge Munley has professor envy. Perhaps his work would be better appreciated in some Latino studies classes at Berkeley.
2) When it comes to the laws of the land, I would prefer that our judges drink from the source, not downstream after the cattle have waded through it.

Just looking at this bibliography one could make a strong case that Munley is an “Activist” judge.