Leila Kawar has written a fascinating account of legal activism in the context of immigration law debates in the United States and France. Contesting Immigration Policy in Court is admirable in scope in illuminating developments in each nation, and in offering a more general perspective on immigration law and policy because of the author’s comparative approach. The work also offers a valuable contribution to literatures in law and public policy, law and social movements, and law and American political development.

Stated broadly, Kawar’s thesis is that legal activists in the United States and France have influenced the substance of immigration law and policy in their respective nations by helping to introduce new conceptual frames, including new conceptions of identity, social relations, and narratives of legal processes (pp. 2–3, 5–6, 8–9, 60–64, 158–61). Some of these ideas were subsequently endorsed by judges and found themselves embedded within the legal doctrine itself (e.g., pp. 54–55), but Kawar highlights a more expansive role for legal arguments in her narrative: “By shifting the focus away from the official rules laid out in immigration cases and toward the process by which immigration policy has been contested in court, we can explore how legal engagements generate identities and meanings whose repercussions extend far beyond any single case’s judicially enforced remedy or doctrinal contribution” (pp. 2–3).

Kawar’s thesis is convincing in part because of the judiciousness of her claims. She acknowledges that in crucial respects, the efforts of legal activists in the United States and France failed to achieve more transformative legal and policy changes. Thus, her story is not a simpler narrative of legal activists attempting to transform the law, and succeeding in all of their ambitions (pp. 157–58). Rather, her claim is more subtle: New legal concepts and new social narratives offered in legal arguments by activists and judges have changed immigration law and policy in the United States and France by virtue of their “radiating effects” (pp. 2–3), These new concepts and narratives have prompted change by more modestly shifting baseline presumptions, encouraging changes in terminology, and subtly redefining the terms of legal and political conflict—even while these new legal concepts, terms, and narratives may not have fundamentally transformed the policy settlements in either national context. As she eloquently states in her concluding paragraph: “Law matters less than the content of rights-expansive decisions would indicate, but law matters more than an examination of compliance with official case dispositions would suggest” (p. 164).

The author illuminates these points with carefully researched and illuminating chapters on the rise of legal activist networks focusing on immigration law in the United States and France; the introduction of new legal concepts and narratives by members of these networks; the subsequent entrenchment and professionalization of legal activist organizations in both nations; and an exploration of crucial procedural avenues utilized by legal activists in both nations (the class action lawsuit in the United States, and petitioning the Conseil d’Etat to exercise its power of abstract review in France). She concludes with a helpful concluding chapter summarizing her claims and offering hope that the radiating effects of these new legal concepts and narratives initially proposed by legal activists may yet achieve more transformative changes in the future (p. 163).

In all, Contesting Immigration Policy in Court is well written and well researched. The author has done extensive work with interviews and archives and in engaging with a multitude of theoretical and historical literatures—and such efforts are reflected in the end product. As someone possessing little familiarity with American immigration law, and no familiarity with the French legal system, I learned much from Kawar’s substantive chapters. Relatedly, her comparative approach proved to be quite valuable both in showing the points of cross-national commonality and in highlighting points of divergence and distinction between the United States and France. Finally, while I have much greater familiarity with the literature on law and politics/law and public policy in the American context, I likewise found Kawar’s exploration of these themes in the immigration context to be thought provoking and a valuable contribution to those literatures.

It is, however, on this last point—particularly with respect to the United States—where I would offer a few questions in reaction to the book. Kawar’s core argument is framed as a reaction to “the conventional wisdom that law has little impact on immigration policy matters” (p. 153). As noted, she departs from this view in illuminating the radiating effects of innovative arguments by legal activists and judges on immigration law and policy, while also partially confirming this view in acknowledging the resistance of immigration law and policy to many of these innovative arguments (pp. 157–61). Still, most of the book is framed toward illuminating her disagreement with the conventional wisdom, and this seems to leave half of this story untold or underexplored. Indeed, an alternative way to read the author’s historical narrative would be to conclude that on net, the radiating effects of these innovative arguments were/are far less significant than the stubborn resilience of certain core legal concepts and broader political forces in the context of immigration law and policy.

To be sure, Kawar is surely correct to emphasize the influence of legal arguments beyond their ability to compel behavior. New conceptual frames may undoubtedly influence legal and political culture in more subtle ways. But the coercive power of the law is still a crucial effect to consider, of course, and she is candid on the disappointments felt by legal activists in both nations (pp. 157–58). If our focus were on policy and legal outcomes, it appears that her narrative could plausibly be the basis for a different set of arguments on the peculiar institutional and social dynamics in immigration law and policy that have locked in certain results (whether due to settled institutional arrangements or pervasive cultural norms) that are incredibly resistant to the creativity and efforts of these legal activists. That is, Kawar’s historical narrative could seemingly support a set of conceptual claims concerning the relatively unchanging nature of immigration law and policy in the United States and France. In the spirit of authorial exchange, it is a major theme of my book, Recalibrating Reform, that even major policy changes—enacted in constitutional amendments and major statutes—are regularly contained by the American political system and the judiciary specifically. I wonder if she may see similarities between our historical narratives, even if we focus on different historical and policy contexts. I will be curious to hear her thoughts on this point since this seemed to me the strongest point of similarity between our respective works. Either way, I found her historical narrative to be thought provoking.

Relatedly, a second question concerns Kawar’s discussion of how legal activist ideas ultimately found their way into the law and the legal culture. I found her Chapter 3 to be the most interesting substantive chapter in its exploration of the ways in which legal activists creatively synthesized ideas in immigration law and policy with established doctrinal and legal concepts to create new ideas, conceptual frames, and narratives. This chapter provided, at least for me, the clearest illustration of how legal activists could directly influence immigration law and policy by refashioning concepts and doctrinal rules.

Ideological and conceptual innovation is clearly a key point of interest for Kawar. Yet what seemed missing in this discussion was a theory as to why certain conceptual innovations seem to become more entrenched in the legal and political culture than others. She notes, for example, that in Plyer v. Doe, the arguments of immigration legal activists enjoyed a relatively more sympathetic reaction in the lower federal courts than the Supreme Court (even though activists still ultimately achieved some of their main goals in the Court’s ruling) (pp. 54–55). Why?

Surely the “success” of certain ideological innovations has to do with the power of the ideas themselves—which seems to be Kawar’s view as well. But one would suspect that since federal judges are tied to broader political influences both during and after their appointments, there is likely a political element that influences which conceptual innovations enjoy more positive reactions among federal judicial decision makers. If, for example, the “undocumented schoolchildren” in Plyler could plausibly be analogized to African Americans as another “discrete and insular” minority (p. 54) for some federal judges, the success of such an analogy would seem to require both conceptual attractiveness and enough background sociopolitical support for it to be politically plausible. Kawar nods more generally to such a political influence on successful conceptual innovations in her references to work in the law and American political development literature (p. 49). Still, a theory or a more detailed account of how legal activists succeeded in influencing judicial decision makers to accept their conceptual innovations—to greater or lesser degrees—would have been useful in further clarifying how immigration law and policy was influenced by the efforts of these activists.

In sum, Contesting Immigration Policy in Court is a fascinating exploration of these issues and an excellent illustration of an interdisciplinary work that is enhanced by its engagement with multiple literatures and multiple scholarly audiences. Scholars interested in immigration law, the study of ideas and ideology, and the intersection between law and politics/policy will likely find this a valuable book.