Natelson/Kopel Respond to Balkin on “Commerce”

Here.

Of note, here is the part of the response directed toward the Indian Commerce Clause:

The Indian Intercourse Act. Plentiful Founding-Era evidence, including enactments of the Confederation Congress and state legislatures, show that “Commerce with the Indian tribes” referred to mercantile trade with the Indians and certain tightly related activities, such as the licensing of and control over the behavior of merchants.[19]

Balkin enlists the Indian Intercourse Act of 1790 as exemplifying a broad meaning of the Indian Commerce Clause. Because the 1790 act included some criminal provisions (as trade regulations often did), Balkin argues that the meaning of “commerce” extended far beyond trade.

The Indian Intercourse Act was adopted after the Constitution had been ratified, and, like the Sedition Act a few years later, is not necessarily a correct guide to public understanding of the Constitution at the time of ratification. However, if the act had been adopted pursuant to the commerce power, and  before the holdouts of North Carolina and Rhode Island had ratified the Constitution, the act would help the Balkin thesis very little, for the law’s criminal provisions were typical of contemporaneous trade regulation-designed to protect trade by punishing merchants who entered Indian territory without authorization.[20]

In fact, however, the law was an exertion of the treaty power, not the commerce power. It was adopted on the recommendation of President Washington “for extending a trade to [the Indians] agreeably to the treaties of Hopewell.”[21] Several years ago, one of us discussed this background, including an explanation for why the law extended beyond the signatory tribes.[22]

 

Seattle U. Conference Materials — “Perspectives on Tribal Land Acquisitions in 2010: A Call to Action”

Eric Eberhard has generously provided the entire conference transcript and materials packet for the Seattle University Center for Indian Law and Policy conference, “Perspectives on Tribal Land Acquisitions in 2010: A Call to Action.”

These materials easily are the finest set of documents relating to the last 30 years of the law and politics of Interior trust acquisitions.

It’s an 862-page document, about 100 MB, but worth the time to download [if you want the CD, please contact Eric or others in the program]

Perspectives on Tribal Land Acquisition in 2010

Rick Collins on War Propaganda and Transparency

Here is the link to Rick’s new paper, “Propaganda for War and Transparency,” published in the Denver University Law Review.

California Law Review Special Issue on Phil Frickey

The entire issue is available online here.

Forwarded message:
Issue in Honor of Professor Frickey

The August, 2010 issue of the California Law Review is dedicated to the lasting memory of Professor Philip P. Frickey — a towering scholar, beloved teacher, and inspiring mentor.

In April 2009, Boalt Hall hosted a festschrift honoring Professor Frickey, who had recently been diagnosed with terminal cancer. This issue collects essays presented at the event, as well as other contributions, including an annotated bibliography of Professor Frickey’s scholarly work; a tribute poem by a colleague; and a student comment that developed, with Professor Frickey’s guidance, in his Federal Indian Law course.

Most poignantly, this issue includes a posthumous Essay Professor Frickey authored in his final year. His wife, Mary Ann Bernard, provides a short introduction to the Essay, which takes the form of a prologue to a book he never finished.

In that Essay, the ever-humble Professor Frickey predicts that the legal academy will not remember his work in fifty years. We respectfully disagree, and hope this issue helps prove the contrary.

Journal of Court Innovation Special Issue on Tribal Justice

ARTICLES

Full Faith and Credit and Cooperation Between State and Tribal Courts: Catching Up to the Law
By Paul Stenzel | PDF

Treaties, Tribal Courts, and Jurisdiction: The Treaty of Canandaigua and the Six Nations’ Sovereign Right to Exercise Criminal Jurisdiction
By Carrie E. Garrow | PDF

21st Century Indians: The Dilemma of Healing
By Carey N. Vicenti | PDF

The State of Pretrial Release Decision-Making in Tribal Jurisdictions: Closing the Knowledge Gap By John Clark | PDF

Tribal Probation: An Overview for Tribal Court Judges
By Kimberly A. Cobb and Tracy G. Mullins | PDF

INTERVIEWS

Introduction Reflections on Tribal Justice: Conversations with Native American Judges | PDF

Abby Abinanti, Chief Judge, Yurok Tribal Court, Klamath, California, and California  Superior Court Commissioner | PDF

P.J. Herne, Chief Judge, St. Regis Mohawk Tribal Court, Akwesasne, N.Y. | PDF

B.J. Jones, Tribal Court Judge and Director, Tribal Judicial Institute at the University of North Dakota School of Law | PDF

Continue reading

New Book on the Doctrine of Discovery in Commonwealth Countries

Discovering Indigenous Lands

Robert J. Miller, Jacinta Ruru, Larissa Behrendt and Tracey Lindberg

This book presents new material and shines fresh light on the under-explored historical and legal evidence about the use of the doctrine of discovery in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States.

Continue reading

Last Call for Papers — Indigenous Law Journal

Here: ILJ Call for Submissions

Kevin Maillard on Children as Property

Kevin Noble Maillard has published Rethinking Children as Property: The Transitive Family in the Cardozo Law Review.

Here is the abstract:

Despite the collective view in law and social practice that it is intrinsically taboo to consider human beings as chattel, the law persists in treating children as property. Applying principles of property, this Article examines paternity disputes to explain and critique the law’s view of children as property of their parents. As evidenced in these conflicts, the Article demonstrates that legal paternity exposes a rhetoric of ownership, possession, and exchange. The law presumes that a child born to a married woman is fathered by her husband, even when irrefutable proof exists that another man fathered the child. Attempts by non-marital biological fathers to assert parental rights regularly fail, as states allow only one father to “claim” the child. This approach treats the nonmarital father as a trespasser and categorically favors the fundamental due process rights of the marital father.

Cardozo Law Conference on Employment Division v. Smith — No Indian Law Scholars

Ach, hate to point this out. Here is the agenda for last week’s major conference on Employment Division v. Smith at Cardozo, with papers to be published in the Cardozo Law Review (which last published an Indian law article in 1991, as far as we can tell).

We had a great discussion on religious freedom this last weekend with Doug Laycock, Chris Lund, and Frank Ravitch.

Scholarship on the link between economic progress and evironmental regulation in Indian country

Here’s an article by Daniel Watts arguing that tribes’ economic progress is tied to environmental law and policy.
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1687376