Keywords: Trump, Paul Virtue, presumption, regularity

On March 27, 2018, ten former officials from the US Department of Justice, Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Naturalization Service, Federal Bureau of Investigation, and Department of Health and Human Services filed an amicus brief to the Supreme court challenging the government's misplaced reliance of the "presumption of regularity" in the Trump Travel Ban case.  "The presumption of regularity is founded on the commonsense idea that courts should assume that government officials 'have properly discharged their official duties'...before entertaining doubts about the integrity of official acts or documents." As former General Counsel of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, as well as former Executive Associate Commissioner and former Deputy General Counsel of that agency, Paul Virtue was one of the participants in the brief.  The brief was submitted "to make clear that the "presumption of regularity" has never been an obstacle to a court's consideration of evidence showing that government officials have acted with an improper purpose."  The brief can be read here.

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