From SCOTUSblog today:
Back on the civil side, we have Arctic Slope Native Assoc. v. Sebelius, 11-83. No, it’s not another health care challenge: Arctic Slope concerns a Native American contractor stiffed by a government agency because it did not have enough money left in its annual appropriation to pay. Per the Solicitor General’s recommendation, the case is likely being held for Salazar v. Ramah Navajo Chapter, 11-551, a pending government petition that raises a similar question.
We think. 🙂
Here is today’s order list.
The Supreme Court also denied cert in Evans v. Wapato Heritage and Begay v. United States, a case that the Ninth Circuit heard en banc.
Here is the news coverage (h/t How Appealing) of this interesting historical case involving the notes from the Lewis & Clark expedition. An excerpt:
Both the state and the company say Lewis and Clark’s experiences make their case.
Clement points out that the expedition never even attempted to navigate one of the rivers at issue, and that the record shows Lewis and Clark bypassed the 17-mile Great Falls Reach of the Missouri “not out of convenience, but out of necessity — the stretch was impassable.”
Historians who agree with PPL said the state’s evidence of the commercial history of the rivers is in part based on notoriously unreliable frontier-era newspapers with boosterish and fabricated tales of “28-pound radishes and steamboat traffic between Denver and the Gulf of Mexico.”
Montana replies with Lewis’s observation that he did not believe “that the world can furnish an example” of how rivers can run through such mountainous country as Montana and yet be “so navigable as they are.”
It is beyond dispute that the rivers played an important part of the new nation’s economic development, Montana argues.The state’s supportive historian is Stephenie Ambrose Tubbs, who has written extensively about Montana and is the daughter of Lewis and Clark scholar Stephen Ambrose.
“For those of us who have spent our lives on these Rivers, retracing Lewis and Clark’s historic footsteps,” she told the court in a brief, a piecemeal approach to ownership is threatening.
And, for those who look to original meaning, she proposed that the court affirm the Montana Supreme Court, which she said recognized “that these rivers were navigable, as that term was understood by President Jefferson and the Founders before him.”
Craig A. Schwartz has published Footloose: How to Tame the Tucker Act Shuffle After United States v. Tohono O’odham Nation in the UCLA Law Review Discourse.
The article has very little to do with Indian law, but demonstrates (if you read between the lines a bit) how the United States probably used all of the Indian claims cases now being dismissed en masse to also wipe out a class of claims based on regulatory takings. If the CFC “shuffle” case had arisen in the regulatory takings context, imagine how Scalia, J. would have reacted.
Here.
Scotusblog’s list of petitions to watch for last week’s conference is here.
The government recommended a hold in this case, arguing that the Ramah Navajo petition is a better vehicle. So, maybe the Court will resist this case, and hold it pending the decision in Ramah, or perhaps relist here and then consolidate it with Ramah.
Here:
The petition of the day is:
Salazar v. Ramah Navajo Chapter
Docket: 11-551
Issue(s): Whether the government is required to pay all of the contract support costs incurred by a tribal contractor under the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act, 25 U.S.C. § 450 et seq., where Congress has imposed an express statutory cap on the appropriations available to pay such costs and the Secretary cannot pay all such costs for all tribal contractors without exceeding the statutory cap.Certiorari stage documents:
Turtle Talk 
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