Scholarship

New Empirical Study on Indian Land Fractionation on 12 Reservations

Matthew L.M. Fletcher1 Comment

Jacob W. Russ & Thomas Stratmann have posted “Creeping Normalcy: Fractionation of Indian Land Ownership” on SSRN.

Here is the abstract:

In 1992 the General Accounting Office (GAO) published a quantitative survey of Indian land ownership of twelve reservations, which was the first and still is the only survey of Indian land ownership. In our study we use 2010 data to show how ownership fractionation for these reservations has changed since the original GAO study. We find that, despite the whole of Congressional action regarding land fractionation, and the US Bureau of Indian Affairs’ (BIA’s) land consolidation programs, fractionation has not only continued, but BIA’s complex recordkeeping workload has nearly doubled for the twelve reservations over the eighteen year interval. The GAO estimated that BIA’s annual recordkeeping costs for these twelve reservations was between $40 and $50 million. With the addition of over a million new ownership records, due to fractionation, we estimate yearly recordkeeping costs have increased to $246 million in 2010.

Harvard Law Review Comment on Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl

Matthew L.M. Fletcher

Here.

An excerpt:

It is this very inability to escape uncertainty, qualification, and conflict that ultimately situates Adoptive Couple in the Court’s parental rights canon and that suggests its ongoing significance. Like its predecessors, Adoptive Couple is another deeply divided and closely fought decision, which refuses to wholly deny the power of biology even as it insists upon proactive parenting and affective relationships. The conditions and disclaimers embedded in the case’s holding, taken together with the equal conviction and fervor of both opposing opinions, thus serve as proof of the interminability of such judicial debates about the family.94 Further, the Court’s very willingness to engage in a stark contest over biology versus family in a case that by no means required it — and to engage vigorously, even viciously — seems a harbinger of things to come: in an age of momentous changes in the composition of the family, alluded to both in the decision and in other decisions of the Term, questions regarding which relationships and nontraditional ties warrant judicial protection promise to appear with ever more frequency and complexity. As Adoptive Couple shows, however, the Court remains mired in the same disputes it first unleashed forty years earlier, still grappling with the fundamental tension between nature and nurture. Yet this irresolution and ongoing struggle may well be a cause for comfort rather than concern, a sign that the essential questions about the most essential ties and  relationships remain open for investigation and reinvestigation.

Fletcher on the Michigan v. Bay Mills Case

Matthew L.M. Fletcher2 Comments

Here is (Re)Solving the Tribal No-Forum Conundrum: Michigan v. Bay Mills Indian Community (PDF), published in the Yale Law Journal Online.

The abstract:

Michigan v. Bay Mills Indian Community, a dispute over a controversial off-reservation Indian casino, is the latest opportunity for the Supreme Court to address the doctrine of tribal sovereign immunity. The Court could hand Michigan a big win by broadly abrogating tribal immunity, and in turn wreak havoc on modern tribal governance. Alternately, the Court could hand Bay Mills a victory by affirming the tribe’s immunity, effectively precluding judicial review of the tribe’s casino project. In this Essay, Professor Matthew L.M. Fletcher argues that neither choice is preferable to a third option that would both advance tribal self-determination and hold tribes accountable to outsiders. The Court could condition tribal immunity in federal or state court on whether the tribe has solved the no-forum problem by providing a tribal forum for the resolution of important disputes.

Research Guide to American Indian Tax Law

Matthew L.M. Fletcher2 Comments

The Law Library Journal has published “Analytical Research Guide to Federal Indian Tax Law” by M. Christian Clark. Very nice article and well worth a read-through.

An excerpt:

Turtle Talk: The Indigenous Law and Policy Center Blog. https://turtletalk.wordpress.com.
Matthew L.M. Fletcher, Wenona T. Singel, and Kathryn E. Fort of the Indigenous Law and Policy Center at Michigan State University College of Law maintain Turtle Talk, a blog that updates readers on current Indian law issues. Fletcher has authored dozens of Indian law articles, including many concerning Indian tax law. The blog frequently includes the most cited sources on Indian law, which is highly useful for litigation, IRS administrative disputes, and assessing specific Indian issues. A weekly summary with analysis and case updates may be subscribed to by e-mail.

Miigwetch for the nice notice. Not sure weekly summaries are in the offering though. 🙂

Huh. KF says you can. Shows what I know.

Student Note Addresses Native Access to Capital Markets

Matthew L.M. Fletcher

The Review of Banking & Financial Law has published “Financing Native Nations: Access to Capital Markets” by Jenny Small.

New Scholarship Supporting Reform of 25 U.S.C. § 1500

Matthew L.M. Fletcher

Emily S. Bremer & Jonathan R. Siegel have published Clearing the Path to Justice: The Need to Reform 28 U.S.C. § 1500, in the Alabama Law Review.

An excerpt:

Plaintiffs suing the United States face a little-known obstacle to justice: 28 U.S.C. § 1500. This statute prohibits the United States Court of Federal Claims from exercising jurisdiction over a claim if the plaintiff has the same claim pending in another court. This apparently sensible rule causes considerable trouble because a “claim” is understood to include all claims based on the same operative facts, and Congress has required that certain types of claims against the United States must go to different courts. Therefore, a plaintiff with multiple claims against the United States may neither be able to bring the claims together in one case nor split them into separate cases. Section 1500 may effectively compel such a plaintiff to pursue only one claim and abandon the others. This unjust result  is contrary to fundamental principles of modern civil procedure, which allow a plaintiff to pursue multiple claims against a defendant. Worse, it serves no good purpose. This Article argues that Congress should repeal § 1500 to provide justice to plaintiffs with multiple claims against the United States.

This article is based on a report they co-authored for the United States Administrative Conference.

California Law Review Comment on Duroville Receivership

Matthew L.M. Fletcher

Ziwei Hu has published “Equity’s New Frontier: Receiverships in Indian Country” in the California Law Review.

The abstract:

Southern California’s Coachella Valley is one of the poorest regions in the country. Its location in Riverside County-which is within close proximity to some of the nation’s wealthiest citizens and also the U.S.-Mexico border-along with the county’s dependence onthe agriculture industry has contributed to a significant demand for low-wage farm workers, who often have a mix of immigration statuses. Historical, political, and socioeconomic factors have compounded to limit affordable housing options in the Coachella Valley for these farm workers and have generated the proliferation of illegal trailer parks with egregious habitability concerns on the vast swathes of Indian country throughout the county. Tribal sovereignty renders these parks beyond the reach of prophylactic state and local laws that would otherwise protect the health, safety, and welfare of the parks’ residents. Consequently, these parks are subject only to the jurisdiction of federal courts. In United States v. Duro, a federal judge appointed a receiver to oversee urgent infrastructure improvements in Duroville, one of the largest parks. Receivership is arguably the strongest and most invasive articulation of a court’s equitable powers because it strips a party of his property rights and vests control of the property in question to a third party that is accountable only to the court. The court’s action in appointing a receiver was a key factor in the provision of a safe relocation site for Duroville’s residents, which required a concerted effort by the County, the State, and a private housing developer. This Comment explores the implications that this groundbreaking case has for other trailer parks on Indian country in the Coachella Valley. Ultimately, it concludes that the Duroville receivership was a necessary and legitimate extension of the court’s equitable powers and that receivership can be an effective means both to remedy urgent habitability problems in other trailer parks on Indian land and to spur local government actors to work towards providing decent, safe, and affordable housing alternatives for residents of these parks.

We posted on United States v. Duro here.

Prof. Karen Tani Writes About “Remembering the ‘Forgotten Child'” in Light of Adoptive Couple at Jotwell

Kate Fort

Here.

These revelations are sure to disturb any reader, but the point of Jacobs’s important article is not to expose adoption proponents as disingenuous or malevolent. It is to place an ongoing phenomenon—Indian children’s disproportionately high rate of separation from their families—in proper historical context. (P. 154.) “It is no coincidence,” Jacobs writes, “that the IAP arose during the era in which the federal government promoted termination [of tribal nations’ special status] and relocation policies for American Indians.” (P. 152.) Adoptions enabled the federal government to terminate its responsibilities, child by child, by shifting them to “the ultimate ‘private’ sector.” (P.154.) By extension, Jacobs argues, adoptive families also advanced the government’s long-term “effort[] to eliminate Indianness.” (P. 154.) This, Jacobs demonstrates, was the backdrop for the ICWA. When tribal leaders and advocacy organizations convinced Congress to enact the new law, it was a small victory in a long war. And when plaintiffs invoke the ICWA today, they raise a hard-won shield.

We agree that Margaret Jacobs “Remembering the ‘Forgotten Child’: The American Indian Child Welfare Crisis of the 1960s and 1970s” 37 American Indian Quarterly 136 (2013) is an excellent and important article.

Jason Sanders on Wisconsin’s Mi’ingan Hunt

Matthew L.M. Fletcher

Anishinaabe law student and scholar Jason Sanders has posted, “Wolves, Lone and Pack: Ojibwe Treaty Rights and the Wisconsin Wolf Hunt,” his student note forthcoming in the Wisconsin Law Review.

Here is the abstract:

In 2012, Wisconsin authorized the first state hunt of gray wolves. Wisconsin’s interest in wolf depredation is legitimate: the growth in wolf population has exponentially increased human-wolf conflicts and state expense. Yet, Wisconsin shares these wolves; 83 percent of gray wolves reside on Ojibwe reservations or on territory ceded by the Ojibwe, where the Tribes still have resource rights. The Tribes vehemently oppose the wolf hunt. The Ojibwe maintain a strong cultural kinship with wolves and have traditionally prohibited wolf hunting. The Tribes named wolves a “tribally protected species,” asserting a right to protect all the wolves shared with Wisconsin. Historically, the Tribes and the State cooperatively managed shared resources. However, the State initiated the wolf hunt despite tribal protestations, instigating the first break from cooperative management in decades. Both sovereigns have legitimate and conflicting interests and appear to risk their first major treaty rights litigation in decades.

This Comment analyzes the extent of each sovereign’s wolf rights in light of biological research and existing Indian law precedents. The first issue is the scope of the State’s obligation to respect the Tribes’ sovereign rights to protect and perpetuate reservation wolf packs. The second issue is the extent of the Tribes’ rights to protect ceded-territory wolves away from reservations. This Comment argues that the Tribes can protect and perpetuate reservation wolves as a component of inherent sovereignty. Wisconsin must implement a wolf policy that respects that sovereignty, including a hunt-free “buffer zone” of some wolf territory directly adjoining the reservation. However, the Tribes’ claim to protect all shared wolves is untenable, as tribal rights over wolves away from the reservation are much weaker. But the Tribes have rights correlated to those wolves and are entitled, at minimum, to a policy that ensures species survival; additionally, the Tribes can consider other options to protect wolves. Ultimately, this Comment proposes that both sovereigns can and should resolve this conflict through negotiation, continuing the tradition of cooperative management, and avoiding lengthy and expensive litigation.

Gregory Sisk on Strict Construction of Federal Waivers of Sovereign Immunity

Matthew L.M. Fletcher

Gregory C. Sisk has posted “Twilight for the Strict Construction of Waivers of Federal Sovereign Immunity,” forthcoming in the North Carolina Law Review, on SSRN. An important read for tribal advocates.

Here is the abstract:

The Government of the United States has long benefited from two canons of statutory construction that tip the scales of justice heavily in its direction in civil litigation by those seeking redress of harm by that government: First, the federal government’s consent to suit must be expressed through unequivocal statutory text. Second, even when a statute explicitly waives federal sovereign immunity for a subject matter, the traditional rule has been that the terms of that statute “must be construed strictly in favor of the sovereign.” The restrictive effect of these rules has made a distinct difference in cases that truly matter to the lives and well-being of ordinary people.

Since the dawn of the new century, however, the Supreme Court’s increasingly common encounters with waivers of federal sovereign immunity are also becoming more conventional in interpretive attitude. During the first eleven years of the twenty-first century, the Court turned a deaf ear to the government’s plea for special solicitude in the substantial majority of instances and frequently declared that the canon of strict construction was unhelpful or ill-suited. In four sovereign immunity cases decided in the 2012 Term, the Court continued to evidence a commitment to text, context, and legislative history, unblemished by any presumption of narrow construction. Notably during oral arguments in this most recent term, multiple members of the Court openly challenged the government’s reach for broader immunity.

In these recent decisions, the Court increasingly accepts a dichotomy between the threshold question of whether sovereign immunity has been waived (requiring a “clear statement” by Congress) and the inquiry into how the statutory waiver should be interpreted in application (with the canon of strict construction fading away as a viable tool for statutory interpretation).