Dru Stevenson, Professor of Law

Imagine you are in a high-stakes competition—perhaps a game of chess or a professional sports match. You’ve trained for years and you know the rules by heart. But as the match begins, you realize something unsettling: your opponent has a playbook you’ve never seen. In fact, they have a library of thousands of past matches that you aren't allowed to look at. They can cite these past moves to the referee to win the game, while you are left guessing in the dark. For decades, this wasn’t a metaphor; it was the reality for immigration lawyers in the United States. Every year, the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) issues tens of thousands of decisions. Most of them are "unpublished," meaning they aren't printed in the official law books. But the government’s lawyers had them. They could search them, find the ones that helped their case, and use them against immigrants who had no way of seeing the "secret law" being used against them. In 2021, a group of legal ai...

  🏛️ New: The Complete Administrative Law Lecture Series is Now Public I am pleased to announce the public availability of the complete Administrative Law lecture series for the Fall 2025 semester. This series includes 46 new videos posted in the last seven months, covering the core principles of the administrative state and essential topics for the bar exam and legal practice. The videos cover the full spectrum of agency power, including rulemaking, adjudication, and the critical role of judicial review. As a Professor of Law at South Texas College of Law Houston (STCL), this is the definitive, up-to-date guide for current legal analysis. Why This Content is Essential Now (H2) The Supreme Court’s recent decisions have fundamentally reshaped the landscape of Administrative Law, making new, up-to-date analysis essential for students and practitioners alike. This series includes new videos focused on: ⚖️ Statutory Interpretation and Deference (H3) New analysis on the Chevron doct...