Here are the materials in Guidiville Rancheria of California v. Ginsburg (N.D. Cal.):
California Federal Court Enjoins Demand to Arbitrate Arbitrability
California Firm Sues California Tribe in California Federal Court
Here are the materials (so far) in Farella Braun + Martel LLP v. Guidiville Rancheria of California (N.D. Cal.):
Grant Christensen on Enforceability of Tribal Court Judgments
Grand Christensen has posted “Tribal Court Judgments” on SSRN.
Here is the abstract:
Does a state court have to enforce a judgment issued by a tribal court? In 1991 the Arizona Supreme Court surveyed the current treatment of tribal court judgments and concluded that a majority of courts “extend[ ] the application of the full faith and credit clause” to decisions rendered by tribal courts. Just fifteen years later the Southern District of Florida castigated the Miccosukee Tribe for making the same representation; reasoning that “the clear majority of states addressing the issue have concluded that Indian tribes” are outside of the Full Faith and Credit Statute.
This Article corrects the judicial record. First, it actually surveys the split among state laws and concludes that most states that have considered the issue treat tribal court judgments as enforceable beyond the traditional comity extended to judgments from foreign courts, although not all of these states describe this recognition as full faith and credit. Second, it makes a normative argument, suggesting that the Supreme Court’s recent decision in a relatively obscure bankruptcy case, Lac du Flambeau v. Coughlin, actually resolves the conflict and mandates that state courts extend full faith and credit to tribal court judgments. Finally, the Article considers the limited enumerated powers of Congress and the federal courts, to suggest that while states must give full faith and credit to tribal court judgments, tribes are free to decide for themselves whether to reciprocally recognize state court judgments.
The implications are profound. The judicial record is replete with hundreds of cases, across dozens of states, searching for guidance on the scope of the Full Faith and Credit Statute when applied to Indian tribes. There is a circuit split. There are federal courts refusing to comply with nineteenth century Supreme Court precedent that has never been overturned. The congressional response has been piecemeal, requiring full faith and credit in specific circumstances, without ever articulating a standard for the recognition of other tribal court judgments. This Article unifies history and practice, statute and precedent, to articulate a single consolidated theory of the recognition of tribal court judgments.
Grant Christensen on David Wilkins’
Grant Christensen has posted “The Return to Autochthonous Law” in the University of Chicago Law Review.
Here is the abstract:
This Book Review examines the significance of Professor David E. Wilkins’s (Lumbee Nation) newest book Indigenous Governance: Clans, Constitutions, and Consent. It suggests that Wilkins has produced a critically important collection of primary sources related to the origins of tribal government and that his contribution could not come at a better time within the discipline of Indian Law.
This Book Review takes the position that Indian Law is seeing the emergence of a fourth wave of scholarship that recenters the conversation from tribal self-determination as a means of decolonization to one embracing the autochthonous powers of tribes themselves. It is distinct from earlier waves of Indian Law scholarship because it does not position tribal powers within the tribal-federal framework but recognizes them as distinct and subject to change at the direction of tribal leadership. To enable this genesis, scholars need primary research material that collects and summarizes the nature of the tribal sovereign using tradition and custom, tribal law and tribal judicial authority, and the founding documents and stories that ultimately create an Indigenous polity. Indigenous Governance is that text. It will enable a new generation of Indian Law scholarship and will exacerbate the severance of tribal law from federally imposed grants and limitations.
GILS Day 2 Photos
ASU-UCLA Gathering of Indigenous Legal Scholars Day 1 Later Panels
ASU-UCLA Gathering of Indigenous Legal Scholars Day 1 Opening Panels
Wisconsin Sues Lac du Flambeau Band over Nonmember Fishing
Torey Dolan on the Indian Law Aunties
Torey Dolan has published “The Indian Law Aunties” in the UMKC Law Review.
An excerpt:
American Indian women in the legal academy have stepped in to fight this persistent othering and invisibility in the law: through service, scholarship, and tenacious advocacy. In doing so, they have created Indigenous feminist spaces
whereby Native people can resist intellectual and social assimilation to varying degrees. Sarah Deer (Muscogee Nation) argued prophetically in 2019, “to cultivate future feminist interventions in Indian law, I contend we must do more to recruit and support Native women law students, and, ultimately, more Native women law professors.” In Native communities, “auntie” is a term of endearment for Indigenous women, often women who take positions of leadership: cultural, social, professional, or otherwise. The term encompasses blood relatives but also extends beyond them to accommodate expansive Indigenous philosophies of kinship and community care. As Laurel Goodluck (Tsimshian Tribe) describes her children’s book “Fierce Aunties,” aunties come in a variety of shapes, sizes, experiences, and backgrounds, but what these fierce aunties share is “[they] see you, they know you, and they love all of you, always.” Aunties are who you go to for guidance, advice, support, and courage. Native women entering the legal academy today are heirs to a generation of Native aunties who have toiled to build communities and infrastructures to support Native students and Indian law education. I call them the “Indian law aunties.” Native women in the legal academy (the “Indian law aunties”) resist invisibility through labor, advocacy, and institution-building for the Native women coming into law behind them. They have paved the way for future generations of Native women scholars through their unapologetically indigenous feminist interventions. This Essay seeks to name the othering and disappearing of Native women within U.S. settler colonialism, contextualize the invisibility of Native women in the academy, honor the interventions of the Indian law aunties, and advocate for a more equitable future where the labor is not theirs alone.
This article comes from a symposium on women in legal education.
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