[KR: Here is the study featured in the New York Times on wide disparities in granting of asylum cases across states and according to the gender and past work experience of the immigration judge. (via SSRN)]

Refugee Roulette: Disparities in Asylum Adjudication
Ramji-Nogales, Jaya, Schoenholtz , Andrew and Schrag, Philip G.
http://ssrn.com/abstract=983946
The analysis reveals significant disparities in grant rates, even when different adjudicators in the same office each considered large numbers of applications from nationals of the same country. In many cases, the most important moment in an asylum case is the instant in which a clerk randomly assigns an application to a particular asylum officer or immigration judge.

Using cross-tabulations based on public biographies, the paper also explores correlations between sociological characteristics of individual immigration judges and their grant rates. The cross tabulations show that the chance of winning asylum was strongly affected by whether or not the applicant had legal representation, by the gender of the immigration judge, and by the immigration judge’s work experience prior to appointment.