That’s the title of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s op-ed in last Thursday’s Wall Street Journal.  In it, he decried the lack of uniformity of our immigration laws and associated judicial rulings on those laws.

…US immigration law is far from uniform. Inconsistent rulings by the 12 federal appellate courts have created a hodgepodge of jurisprudence, in which the applicable legal precedents depend on the location of the immigration court that heard a case.

He proposed a solution.

Congress can and should restore uniformity and promote efficiency by consolidating all immigration appeals in a specialized court of immigration appeals.

Whatever the merits of Rosenstein’s proposal, though, before any immigration law—any law—can have legitimate, and predictable, effect, boundaries have to be imposed on activist judges.  Before any specialist court—any court—can have legitimate, and predictable, effect, boundaries have to be imposed on activist judges.  This is particularly critical given the judge-centric nature of his proposal.

Judges cannot be allowed to place their personal views of societal need or “fairness” above what the law they’re applying actually says.  Judges cannot be allowed to violate their oaths of office with their imposition of personal views in place of imposing the text of the law(s) before them in cases, including immigration cases.

Failure requires consequences, else judicial failure will continue, to the increasing detriment of our republic.  Those consequences must include, in the most egregious instances or when particular judges demonstrate an especial predilection for activism, removal from the bench.