The Law of the United States-Mexico Border: A Casebook

This casebook is the first to focus on the interaction of the U.S. legal system with Mexican law in the border region. The work presents American court decisions supplemented with the author's commentary and study questions. As the U.S.-Mexico border has generated a wide array of controversies, the casebook covers boundary questions, border detentions, immigrants' rights, family law, real estate transactions, finance and trade, torts, crimes, environmental law, and Mexican law within the United States. It will teach law students in law, public policy, and undergraduate courses about the power and limitations of law in resolving border-related disputes.
"Reich provides students and scholars alike with a compelling framework for understanding how laws made on one side of the border can fashion quite dramatically the lives of people living on the other side of the border (or who wish to cross "la linea" in search of economic security)...Reich's analytical commentary and discussion questions will draw students into spirited debate, but a debate informed by thoughtfully presented case studies rather than toxic polemic. Law professors, legal historians, and attorneys with clients who have transnational legal needs will find Reich's casebook quite useful; law students, including undergraduates enrolled in legal studies programs, will benefit from Reich's ability to make accessible some very complex material."— Professor Michael M. Brescia, The University of Arizona
"While the text is primarily intended for a law school audience, borderlands and other historians will find it a very useful addition to scholarship that accepts as axiomatic the fluidity of the Mexico-U.S. border...The text is invaluable and should not go unnoticed by instructors in those fields...Rather than exclusively mimicking the categories of traditional law study, every chapter engages multiple subjects under headings that will look familiar even to lay readers with a working knowledge of border contestations, such as "boundary issues, " "border detentions," "immigrant's rights," "financial and trade transactions," and "environmental law...One of the many values of this volume is that Reich has cast his net widely to find illustrative legal opinions, reaching back into the 19th century and including cases from a wide variety of United States courts....it is clear that Reich has chosen his case to provide opportunities for readers to contemplate the ramifications of courts adopting (even if unwittingly) one view of the border or the other. Following each case, Reich provides thoughtful discussion questions and an occasional explanatory note, which include asking the reader to consider whether the court is viewing the border as a line or a zone."— Southern California Quarterly, Vol. I0I, No. I