Kate Fort: “The Vanishing Indian Returns: Tribes, Popular Originalism, and the Supreme Court”

Our own Kathryn E. Fort has posted her paper, “The Vanishing Indian Returns: Tribes, Popular Originalism, and the Supreme Court,” on SSRN. It was published in the St. Louis Law Journal.

Here is the abstract:

As the nation faces cultural divides over the meaning of the “Founding,” the Constitution, and who owns these meanings, the Court’s embrace of originalism is one strand that feeds the divide. The Court’s valuing of the original interpretation of the Constitution has reinforced the Founder fetishism also found in popular culture, specifically within the politics of those identified as the Tea Party. As addressed elsewhere, their strict worship of the Founders has historical implications for both women and African Americans, groups both marginalized and viewed as property in the Constitution. No one, however, has written about how the Court’s cobbled historical narrative and their veneration for the Founders have affected American Indian tribes. Tribes  barely exist in the Constitution, and the Founders’ “original” understanding of tribes was that they would inevitably disappear.

The “vanishing Indian” stereotype, promulgated in the early Republic, and reaching an apex in the 1820’s, continues to influence fundamentally how the Court views tribes. Compressing history from the Founding through the  Jacksonian era undermines tribal authority and sovereignty within the Court. In its federal Indian law cases, the Court relies on racial stereotypes and popular conceptions of American history. As a result of these shortcuts, the Court folds all tribes into one large group, empties the American landscape of tribal  peoples, and forces tribes into a past where they only exist to disappear.

New Scholarship: “Property Law and American Empire”

Michael Burger and Paul Frymer have posted their paper, “Property Law and American Empire,” forthcoming in the University of Hawai’i Law Review.

Here is the abstract:

Current scholarship by legal commentators and political scientists recognizes that the weapons of American empire have involved non-militaristic activities as much as militaristic ones. Such non-militaristic activities include the hegemonic influence of trade agreements, the imposition of legal and procedural norms, and the dissemination of ideological and cultural predispositions through corporations and diverse medias. In this paper, we examine an under-explored area on the “soft” belly of the American leviathan, focusing specifically on how property and intellectual property law have operated on physical and ideological frontiers to comprehend, participate in, and legitimate the expansion of American empire. We offer new accounts of two historical instances of empire-building: the acquisition and seizure of property from Native Americans in the early- and mid-19th century, and the expropriation of intellectual property rights to plant genetic resources from indigenous communities in the global South in the late 20th century. These two stories, taken together, offer unique insights into both the process and the substance of law’s operation on the frontier of empire. They illuminate how the authority of law has fused with private power and legal legitimacy to enable the nation to expand swiftly, energetically, and powerfully. These insights, in turn, lead toward the more general conclusion that the rhetoric of property has functioned to subjugate peoples and places, cultures and natures, to an imperial regime.

Speakers Series Today

Profs. Watson, Seed, and Pearl:

20130226-143838.jpg

Ninth Circuit Court Records (1891 to Late 1960s) Digitized and Available Online

Here, h/t to LHB.

Want to read the Ninth Circuit briefs in Winters v. United States? They start here.

Or Squire v. Capoeman? Here.

Tuesday, February 26th at 2pm–Second Spring Speakers Series Event at MSU

Please join us Tuesday afternoon for a discussion of Prof. Blake Watson’s book, Buying America from the Indians.

Spring Speaker Series_Feb

C-SPAN: Angela Riley on “Native American Lands in the Supreme Court” before the Supreme Court Historical Society

From the website:

Angela Riley spoke in the Supreme Court chamber about the history of the Supreme Court and Native American lands. The lecture, which took place in the Supreme Court chamber, was one in a series hosted by the Supreme Court Historical Society on the Constitution, the Supreme Court, and property rights. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg introduced Professor Riley.

Video here.

Mary Kathryn Nagle on the Government’s Fidicuary Duties Pre- and Post-Dawes Act

Mary Kathryn Nagle has published “Nothing to Trust: The Unconstitutional Origins of the Post-Dawes Act Trust Doctrine” in the Tulsa Law Review (48 Tulsa L. Rev. 62 (2012)).

Here is the article:

MKNagle

Nixon Administration Redux — Two Papers from the Nixon Era

These two papers — from 1970 and 1974 — are interesting tidbits on the 1970 Nixon message to Congress and perhaps some backgrounds on the 1975 Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act. Miigwetch to Bob Anderson for the 1970 paper, and miigwetch to whomever sent me the 1974 paper (poor form in losing the accompanying docs).

Nixon Indian speech briefing memo 1970

1974 White Paper — At What Level Sovereignty

Fletcher Talk (“The Eagle Returns”) at Eyaawing Museum and Cultural Center FRIDAY

Here is the My North notice:

Eyaawing Museum and Cultural Center Presents GTB Member and Author Matthew Fletcher in Peshawbestown

Time: October 26, 2012 from 2pm to 3pm
Location: Eyaawing Museum & Cultural Center
Street: 2304 North West Bay Shore Dr.
City/Town: Peshawbestown
Phone: 231.534.7768
Event Type: literary
Organized By: Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians

Ann Tweedy’s “Unjustifiable Expectations” Published by Seattle U. Law Review

Ann E. Tweedy (Hamline Law) has published her paper “Unjustifiable Expectations: Laying to Rest the Ghosts of Allotment-Era Settlers” in the Seattle University Law Review.
Here is the abstract:

During the allotment era, the federal government took land from tribes and parceled some of it out to individual tribal members, while, in most cases, selling off the remainder to non-Indian settlers. Those actions, which are properly understood as unconstitutional takings, have been reinforced through decades of Supreme Court precedent. Specifically, the Court has used the now repudiated federal allotment policy, which contemplated eventual abolition of tribal governments, to justify contemporary incursions on tribal jurisdictional authority as well as other limitations on tribal sovereign rights. In this way, the Court builds new injustices upon old ones. This Article responds to this Supreme Court precedent with two main points. First, it shows that non-Indians at the time had notice that the allotment policy was unfair to tribes (and that they sometimes directly advocated for its injustices). From this information, I argue that non-Indian purchasers of tribal lands—and subsequent purchasers from them—should not be understood to have had justifiable expectations that the reservations would disappear and that they therefore could not be subject to tribal jurisdiction in the future. Second, I argue that the Supreme Court should stop using the troubled history of allotment, which it construes based on incomplete information and without taking account of tribal interests and perspectives, to justify further restrictions on tribal sovereignty. My purpose in this Article is to question both the substance of these presumed expectations and their justifiability. I begin this questioning with a thorough analysis of previously unexamined historical newspaper articles concerning non-Indian settlement of Indian reservations during the allotment era. I then argue that, as reflected by the above quote from Superintendent King, most non-Indians during the allotment period cared little about whether Indians were treated justly. Furthermore, I argue that many non-Indians had notice that tribes were being unjustly deprived of their lands through the allotment process, and that some non-Indians even advocated for this very injustice to occur. Both notice of injustice and complicity in the government’s unjust actions precluded non-Indian purchasers from forming justifiable expectations. This rigorous, context- specific look at non-Indian expectations suggests that, in sharp contrast to current Supreme Court practice, tribal jurisdiction over nonmembers should generally be upheld and Indian reservations should not generally be held to have been diminished or disestablished as a result of allotment.