How Institutional Design Shapes Judicial Regime Maintenance: Evidence from Labor Migration Policy in the United States

Abstract How do political institutions shape what courts do? This article develops a theory of judicial regime maintenance and argues that courts reproduce contested institutional settlements in systematically different ways. Comparing the U.S. H-2 and H-1B labor migration programs, I show how class conflict produces distinct statutory and regulatory frameworks that structure subsequent litigation. In dense regimes, courts regularize policy through recurring judicial review. In thinner and more permissive regimes, courts preserve existing arrangements through insulation. Collectively, these forms of judicial regime maintenance contribute to institutional lock-in and path dependence by making contested political settlements increasingly difficult to alter over time.