Here:
TWO SHIELDS – PlaintiffsRespandOpp1912
The defendants’ motion to dismiss is here.
The complaint is here.
trust relationship
Wyoming Public Radio on the Wind River Tribes’ Federal Circuit Victory
Here.
Federal Circuit Reinstates Wind River Shoshone Trust Claim re: Natural Resources Mismanagement
Here is today’s opinion. An excerpt:
The Shoshone Indian Tribe of the Wind River Reservation and the Arapaho Indian Tribe of the Wind River Reservation (collectively “the Tribes”) appeal the United States Court of Federal Claims’ dismissal of Claim II as time-barred by 28 U.S.C. § 2501 (2006), which bars all suits filed against the United States in the Court of Federal Claims unless filed within six years after the claim accrues. Because we conclude that the Tribes have alleged a continuing trespass, the Court of Federal Claims improperly determined that Claim II is time-barred in its entirety. Accordingly, as explained below, we vacate and remand for further proceedings.
We posted the briefs here.
Ramah Navajo Chapter and Arctic Slope Petitions Listed for Today’s SCT Conference
Yakama Nation Housing Authority Trust/Contract Claims against US Survive Motion to Dismiss
Here are the materials in Yakama Nation Housing Authority v. United States (Fed. Cl.):
DCT Order Denying US Motion to Dismiss YNHA Complaint
US Motion to Dismiss YNHA Complaint
However, the government has filed a motion for reconsideration:
Federal Court Denies Individual Tribal Members Intervention Motion in Round Valley Settlement
Here are those materials in Round Valley Indian Tribe v. United States (Fed. Cl.):
DCT Order Denying Lohman Intervention Motion
The underlying judgment favoring the tribe is here.
Indian Land Tenure Foundation Amicus Brief in Support of Cobell Plaintiffs
Here:
Another Update in Cobell Settlement Appeal
Here are the materials related to a motion by Kimberly Craven to take judicial notice of filings in Two Shields v. United States (Fed. Cl.):
11-5205.poppositiontojudicialnotice
TWO SHIELDS – MOTION TO DISMISS
TWO SHIELDS – LEGAL MEMORANDUM IN SUPPORT OF MOTION TO DISMISS
Update in Cobell v. Salazar (Kimberly Craven Appeal)
Here are the D.C. Circuit briefs so far in Kimberly Craven’s challenge to the Cobell settlement:
Slate on Justice Sotomayor’s “Lonely” Dissent in Jicarilla Apache Nation
Here.
An excerpt:
Sotomayor focused her dissent on the uncomfortable public policy implication of the majority opinion, namely, that the government could have legitimate reasons for managing the trust beyond, or perhaps even contrary to, the interests of the tribe without the obligation to turn over the evidence that proves it. But the majority didn’t flinch. “Congress has structured the trust relationship to reflect its considered judgment about how the Indians ought to be government,” Alito affirmed, “[I]t has been altered and administered as an instrument of federal policy.”
Forget ducks. For Sotomayor, this doesn’t even pass the smell test. The government acts as a trustee and calls itself a trustee, but it won’t abide by any of the traditional duties that go with being a trustee unless it affirmatively accepts them. In effect, the government is using the word trust without feeling obliged by its definition. “There’s no need to use the word,” Sotomayor tartly noted in oral arguments, “because it wouldn’t be a trust.”
The problem for Sotomayor is that the government can be a trustee, but it can’t only be a trustee, and the dual nature of its relationship undermines the trust law exception to attorney-client privilege. Her response is to say that the interests of the trustee and beneficiary should always be aligned; that justice cannot tolerate the casual discharge of a sacred trust, particularly one owed by the federal government to a vulnerable group of people. “Given the history of governmental mismanagement of Indian trust funds,” she says in her dissent, the “application of the fiduciary exception is, if anything, even more important in this context than in the private trustee context.” Maybe so, but that is a moral reply to a legal conundrum. As a matter of law, Sotomayor would have been better off joining Ginsburg’s concurrence, which tried to provide a single exception to the traditional trust relationship. That she did not says a lot about the jurisprudential prerogatives of one of the newest members of the Court.
Jurisprudential prerogatives, and the moral imperatives that underpin them, are the stuff of lonely dissents, which tend to be less about the law than its shortcomings. They are written accounts of a judge’s reckoning with the oldest dilemma of her profession: that what is legal is not necessarily just, and what is just is not necessarily legal. As Sotomayor attests, they can be telling in their despair.
Turtle Talk 
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