Judge Elizabeth A. Kessler
FY 2001 - 2006
Judge Kessler was appointed as an Immigration Judge in January 2006. She received a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1987 from Columbia University; a Master of Arts degree in International Relations 1992 from Yale Graduate School ; and a Juris Doctorate in 1992 from Yale Law School. From November 2003 to January 2006, Judge Kessler served as a deputy associate attorney general at the Department of Justice (DOJ) in Washington, DC. She previously served as a deputy general counsel for the U.S. Department of Energy. Judge Kessler served as general counsel with the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee on Immigration, in Washington, DC, from January 1997 to 1999, and as counsel on the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee from January 1995 to January 1979. From 1993 to 1994, she was an attorney with the Civil Division, Appellate staff, at DOJ, and a Bristow Fellow with the Office of the Solicitor General Judge Kessler served as a law clerk with Judge Richard J. Cardamone, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, from 1992 to 1993. She is a member of both the Maryland and District of Columbia Bars.
Deciding Asylum Cases
Detailed data on Judge Kessler decisions are available for the period covering fiscal years 2001 through 2006. During this period, Judge Kessler is recorded as deciding 158 asylum claims on their merits. Of these, she granted 89, gave no conditional grants, and denied 69. Converted to percentage terms, Kessler denied 43.7 percent and granted (including conditional grants) 56.3 percent. Figure 1 provides a comparison of Judge Kessler's denial rate fiscal year-by-year over this recent period. (Rates for years with less than 25 decisions are not shown.)
Nationwide Comparisons
Compared to Judge Kessler's denial rate of 43.7 percent, nationally during this same period, immigration court judges denied 60.8 percent of asylum claims. In the Baltimore Immigration Court where Judge Kessler was usually based, judges there denied asylum 59.3 percent of the time. See Figure 2.
Judge Kessler can also be ranked compared to each of the 238 individual immigration judges serving during this period who rendered at least one hundred decisions. If judges were ranked from 1 to 238 - where 1 represented the highest denial percent and 238 represented the lowest - Judge Kessler receives a rank of 199. That is 198 judges denied asylum at higher rates, and 39 denied asylum at the same rate or less often.
Why Do Denial Rates Vary Among Judges?
Denial rates reflect in part the differing composition of cases assigned to different immigration judges. For example, being represented in court and the nationality of the asylum seeker appear to often impact decision outcome. Decisions also appear to reflect in part the personal perspective that the judge brings to the bench.
Representation
If an asylum seeker is not represented by an attorney, almost all (87%) of them are denied asylum. In contrast, a significantly higher proportion of represented asylum seekers are successful. In the case of Judge Kessler, 6.3% were not represented by an attorney. See Figure 3. For the nation as a whole, about 8.2% of asylum seekers are not represented.
Nationality
Asylum seekers are a diverse group. Over one hundred different nationalities had at least one hundred individuals claiming asylum decided during this period. As might be expected, immigration courts located in different parts of the country tend to have proportionately larger shares from some countries than from others. And, given the required legal grounds for a successful asylum claim, asylum seekers from some nations tend to be more successful than others.
For Judge Kessler, the largest group of asylum seekers appearing before her came from Ethiopia. Individuals from this nation made up 25.3 % of her caseload. Other nationalities in descending order of frequency appearing before Judge Kessler were: Cameroon (17.7 %), Eritrea (7%), Togo (7%), China (6.3%). See Figure 4.
In the nation as a whole during this same period, major nationalities of asylum seekers, in descending order of frequency, were China (22.3%), Colombia (10.2%), Haiti (9.9%), Albania (3.9%), Indonesia (3.8%), India (3.5%), Guatemala (3.1%), El Salvador (2.1%), Armenia (2.1%), Mexico (1.7%), Russia (1.6%), Ethiopia (1.6%), Pakistan (1.5%), and Cameroon (1.4%).
