SHAUGHNESSY, DISTRICT DIRECTOR, IMMIGRATION AND NATURALIZATION SERVICE, v. UNITED STATES ex rel. ACCARDI (349 U.S. 280)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided May 23, 1955 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 349 U.S. 280 · 75 S. Ct. 746
- Decided
- May 23, 1955
- Term
- October Term 1954
- Vote
- 6–2
- Majority author
- Justice Clark
- Issue area
- Civil Rights
- Disposition
- Reversed and remanded
- Outcome
- Petitioning party won
- Ideological direction
- Conservative
Opinion excerpt
Me. Justice Clark delivered the opinion of the Court. We are called upon in this case to remove ambiguities from a previous opinion which, while clear enough to the trial court, appears to have conveyed a triplicity of meaning to the Court of Appeals. A year ago Accardi was here contesting the dismissal of his habeas corpus petition in which he attacked the refusal of the Board of Immigration Appeals to grant his application for suspension of deportation. Accardi v. Shaughnessy, 347 U. S. 260 (1954). The sole foundation of his claim was that “the Attorney General [is doing] precisely what the regulations forbid him to do: dictating the Board’s decision.” 347 U. S. 260, at 267. We remanded the petition to the trial court for a hearing on the question of “the Board’s alleged failure to exercise its own discretion, contrary to existing valid regulations.” It was alleged on information and belief that the Attorney General had prepared prior to the Board’s decision “a list of one hundred individuals whose deportation he sought . . .” as “unsavory characters”; that Accardi’s name was among the group; and that the “list . . . was circulated by the Department of Justice among all of its employees connected with the Immigration Service and the Board of Immigration Appeals” with the result that “since that time it has been impossible for [Accardi] to secure fair consideration of his…
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