Executive Overreach and Judicial Responses: The Erosion of Oversight in Global Migration Governance

Migration governance is a critical site of rule-of-law backsliding, where the erosion of asylum standards reflects broader democratic decay. The global tension between executive authority and judicial oversight in migration governance has intensified, with governments adopting convergent strategies to curtail judicial review. These include jurisdiction-stripping legislation that removes courts’ authority over migration decisions (e.g. Argentina’s DNU 70/17 and DNU No. 942/2024); procedural mechanisms that pre-empt judicial relief (e.g. Brazil’s STJ Preliminary Suspension No. 3522); codification of practices already invalidated by the judiciary (e.g. Chile, Ecuador); ouster clauses shielding migration-related decisions from merits review (Malaysia’s Immigration Act, s. 59A); and institutional redesign aimed at reducing unfavorable court decisions (e.g. Italy). Moreover, governments worldwide directly undermine judicial independence by exercising discursive and institutional pressure on immigration judges, including by dismissing them or pushing them to resign (e.g. the United States), or through open non-compliance with national and supranational judgments affirming migrants’ rights (e.g. Belgium).
Despite the growing relevance of this phenomenon, further research is needed to systematically analyze these court-curbing strategies and the judicial responses they provoke. Against this backdrop, this panel aligns with the conference’s focus on democratic institutions’ responses to global challenges, aiming to advance institutional analysis in migration governance. It explores executive–judicial interactions, conflicts arising from divergent agendas, and the consequences of these dynamics for migration policies. Beyond migration studies, it engages with political science and socio-legal scholarship on judicial responses to threats to judicial independence.
We invite submissions that address the following themes at the national, comparative, or supranational levels:
- Theoretical contributions to the analysis of executive–judicial dynamics in migration governance.
- Executive court-curbing strategies in migration policy.
- Judicial agency and judicial resistance to threats to judicial independence, including strategies and practices on the bench (judicial interpretation, judicial dialogue, etc.) and off the bench (network cooperation, public dissent, strategic resignation, etc.).
- Comparative analyses of context-dependent factors explaining judicial responses to threats to judicial independence in the field of migration.
- Empirical studies on the impact of executive–judiciary tensions on migration policy.