Professor Chin Comments on Arizona Immigration Controversy for The Republic
Professor Gabriel "Jack" Chin commented for Arizona's The Republic on email sent by former Arizona Senator Russell Pearce, who sponsored the state's controversial immigration law, SB 1070, which has been used in a lawsuit challenging the law. The American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona has acquired thousands of Pearce's email and included them in a legal motion to block a portion of the law, claiming that they demonstrate SB 1070 law was racially motivated and that Pearce fabricated data to persuade legislators to support it.
Professor Chin said that the email and questionable claims of fact alone aren't likely to persuade a court to overturn the law. "If we're talking about the bad views of one legislator, even an important legislator, that's going to be a hard sell because the majority of legislators who voted for the thing might not have been racially motivated," Chin said. "And you can't second-guess the Legislature's factual assumptions. How do we know if any particular fact is the one that made the Legislature decide what it did?"
Gabriel "Jack" Chin, who joined the King Hall faculty in 2011, is a prolific and much-cited criminal and immigration law scholar whose work has addressed many of the most pressing social issues of our time.