{"id":855,"date":"2011-06-06T13:02:11","date_gmt":"2011-06-06T17:02:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www3.law.harvard.edu\/journals\/hlpr\/?p=855"},"modified":"2015-10-02T15:57:05","modified_gmt":"2015-10-02T15:57:05","slug":"some-courts-are-still-afraid-of-the-internet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/2011\/06\/06\/some-courts-are-still-afraid-of-the-internet\/","title":{"rendered":"Some Courts Are Still Afraid of the Internet"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0<\/span>Michael Stephan\u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

Electronic filing of court documents has become a relatively common practice in this country.\u00a0 Nearly all jurisdictions allow electronic filing in some manner, and the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure\u00a0expressly permit electronic filing<\/a>.\u00a0 The benefits of filing documents electronically rather than physically are clear: it\u2019s typically cheaper, faster, and easier.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, some courts still require paper-and-ink documents to arrive in their mailboxes.\u00a0 On Tuesday, the Ninth Circuit questioned this requirement when an immigrant missed a filing deadline by one day due to a Postal Service error.\u00a0 The decision,\u00a0Irigoyen-Briones v. Holder<\/a><\/em>, calls on courts to \u201cassume the availability of email and the internet when [assessing] the reasonableness of government action.\u201d<\/p>\n

Guillermo Irigoyen-Briones, an illegal immigrant from Mexico, was ordered to be removed from the United States on December 18, 2006.\u00a0 Irigoyen-Briones\u00a0 had 30 days to appeal the decision.\u00a0 Over the next three weeks, he found a lawyer, raised money to retain the lawyer, and had the lawyer research his case.\u00a0 The lawyer listened to the tapes from his immigration hearing and prepared the notice of appeal.\u00a0 On January 16\u2014the day before the notice of appeal was due\u2014the lawyer personally drove to a U.S. post office and mailed the notice by express mail with guaranteed next-day delivery.<\/p>\n

But the notice arrived a day late.\u00a0 The United States Postal Service acknowledged that it broke its guarantee of next-day delivery and offered to refund the postage fee.\u00a0 The refund, however, was of no comfort to Irigoyen-Briones whose appeal was then dismissed by the Board of Immigration Appeals as untimely.<\/p>\n

The BIA refused to reconsider its decision or grant Irigoyen-Briones an exception to the filing deadline, claiming that it lacked the jurisdiction to do so.\u00a0 The Ninth Circuit reversed, which means the BIA may now consider Irigoyen-Briones\u2019s appeal.<\/p>\n

After addressing the jurisdiction question, the Ninth Circuit panel assessed the reasonableness of the BIA\u2019s filing deadline.\u00a0 It noted that the BIA \u201ccould easily adopt electronic filing,\u201d which would save attorneys and their clients \u201cfrom the risk of arbitrary horrendous consequences due to chance post office and delivery delays.\u201d\u00a0 It also pointed out the \u201ccruel irony\u201d that the BIA distributes its practice manual over the Internet, \u201cyet pretends the internet does not exist when it comes to receiving papers.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Ninth Circuit wisely recognized that the Internet is not some strange, newfangled\u00a0series of tubes<\/a>\u00a0that should be treated as a novelty.\u00a0 Rather, it\u2019s a widely available and vetted\u00a0tool\u00a0to communicate information.\u00a0 Hopefully other courts will follow the Ninth Circuit\u2019s lead on this issue, and litigants will no longer lose their appeals due to things as trivial as inclement weather or postal service error.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0Michael Stephan\u00a0 Electronic filing of court documents has become a relatively common practice in this country.\u00a0 Nearly all jurisdictions allow […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-855","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/peZQka-dN","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/855","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=855"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/855\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=855"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=855"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}