In the clubby atmosphere of the judiciary, we’d best take note if a federal judge derides another’s “warped logic” and “awful prose” and characterizes as capricious how the entire system handles the daily drama of immigrants’ seeking to stay in this country.

The decision last month by the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in Stanojkova v. Holder is a reminder of the potency and poignancy of individual cases that get lost in the hyperbolic fray of made-for-talk-radio debates on immigration.

The decision by the Chicago court revives sporadically publicized tensions between federal appeals courts and both our lower-prestige, hard-pressed immigration judges and the Board of Immigration Appeals in Falls Church, Va. And it asks us to mull a notion broader than some people may possess of just what constitutes “persecution.”

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