Arteaga v. Mukasey

TROTT, Circuit Judge:

Abraham Lincoln, one of our nation’s wisest presidents and most able lawyers, had an incisive way of illustrating a point about the meaning of language as used in the law. He would ask, “If you call a dog’s tail a leg, how many legs does a dog have?” He would then reject the usual answer “five” with the statement that calling a tail a leg doesn’t make it a leg, “the answer is still four.” We find useful in Part IV A. of this opinion President Lincoln’s admonition not to become misled by expansive and abstract definitions of the term “social group” to the extent that the…