Turtle Talk

Ninth Circuit Reaffirms Katie John Trilogy and Affirms Injunction against State of Alaska

August 20, 2025Matthew L.M. Fletcher

Here is the opinion in United States v. State of Alaska:

24-2251 Download

Briefs here.

D.C. Circuit Affirms Rejection of Crow Allottees Challenge to Water Rights Settlement

August 20, 2025Matthew L.M. Fletcher

Here is the opinion in Crow v. Dept. of the Interior.

Briefs here.

Stanford Law Review Symposium: Promises of Sovereignty

August 20, 2025August 19, 2025Matthew L.M. Fletcher

Here:

Symposium – 2025 – Promises of Sovereignty Tribal Sovereignty, Justice Gorsuch, and the Letter of the Law by *Desmond Mantle* on *July 23, 2025* I meant what I said, and I said what I meant. An elephant’s faithful, one hundred percent! —Dr. Seuss, Horton Hatches the Egg Introduction This Comment seeks to defend Justice Neil Gorsuch’s approach to statutory interpretation, arguing against pragmatist efforts to reduce the Supreme Court’s reliance on textualism and against efforts by fellow self-proclaimed textualists…Volume 77 (2024-2025)

Kinsbury — Symposium – 2025 – Promises of Sovereignty What We Talk About When We Talk About (Indian) Sovereignty: Montana and the Application of General Statutes to Tribes by *Annelisa Kingsbury Lee* on *July 23, 2025* Montana v. US is a case about tribal civil jurisdiction. Yet it has had a second life in a surprising context: federal statutes of general applicability that do not mention tribes. This Comment explores the circuit split on these silent statutes and shows that Montana is the doctrinal lynchpin for every court that has considered…Volume 77 (2024-2025)

Symposium – 2025 – Promises of Sovereignty Separation-of-Powers Formalism and Federal Indian Law: The Question of Executive Order Reservations by *Isaac Cui* on *July 23, 2025* Introduction The creation of Indian reservations largely coincided with and was facilitated by the development of presidential authority to withdraw public lands for Indian purposes. Of the roughly 42.8 million acres of total tribal trust lands in 1951, slightly over 23 million were set aside through executive order. That number far dwarfs any other method…Volume 77 (2024-2025)

Symposium – 2025 – Promises of Sovereignty Tribal Revestiture by *Lauren van Schilfgaarde* on *July 23, 2025* I. Implicit Divestiture Presumes Cultural Incompatibility Tribes have a precarious political posture in relation to the United States. Tribes are distinctly sovereign and extra-constitutional, but are also without meaningful external infrastructure to define and protect their legal status in relation to the United States. That is, the U.S. recognizes Tribes as “domestic dependent nations,” but…Volume 77 (2024-2025)

Symposium – 2025 – Promises of Sovereignty Indigenous Rights to Culture: What’s Next? by *Angela R. Riley* on *July 23, 2025* Introduction For more than two centuries, the United States has maintained—in law and in practice—a colonial system designed to destroy Indigenous peoples’ culture. My work has explored this phenomenon from a property lens, explaining how attacks on Indigenous cultures traverse and encompass all categories of property, including real, tangible, and intangible. From a property perspective,…Volume 77 (2024-2025)

Symposium – 2025 – Promises of Sovereignty The Supreme Court’s Old Habits in a New Era? Native Nations, Statehood, and an Indigenous-led Future for Natural Resources by *Monte Mills* on *July 23, 2025* Introduction After rising from the depths of eras in which the United States intended to eliminate Native Nations, tribal sovereignty remains ascendant. With respect to natural resources, the governance of Native Nations has expanded to more fully occupy the legal space reserved in treaties with the United States. Across the country, Native Nations have built…Volume 77 (2024-2025)

Symposium – 2025 – Promises of Sovereignty Federal Indian Law in a Time of Judicial Self-Aggrandizement by *Dan Lewerenz* on *July 23, 2025* Introduction The Supreme Court is accumulating power. Call it “concentrating power in the court,” a “judicial power grab,” or (as a growing number of scholars are calling it) “judicial aggrandizement” or “judicial self-aggrandizement.” Each of these ideas describes a Supreme Court that is upsetting accepted notions of the separation of powers—accumulating power for itself, often…Volume 77 (2024-2025)

Symposium – 2025 – Promises of Sovereignty Against Judicial Generalists by *Matthew L.M. Fletcher* on *July 23, 2025* There is something irritatingly wrong with Indian law practice at the Supreme Court. Oral argument at the Supreme Court is a bitterly unpleasant affair for Indigenous people and tribal advocates for a lengthy variety of reasons. It is canonical that tribal advocates must attempt to avoid Supreme Court review; the strategic thinking is that the…Volume 77 (2024-2025)

Symposium – 2025 – Promises of Sovereignty Can the Roberts Court Find Federal Indian Law? by *Seth Davis* on *July 23, 2025* Introduction Imagine the lost world of “lawfinding.” In that world, there was a general common law for federal judges to find. And in that world, each statute had a “single, best meaning” for judges to unearth with the traditional tools of statutory interpretation. Of course, we are not going back to that world. Too much…Volume 77 (2024-2025)

Sad News: Terrence Stamp Walks On

August 19, 2025August 19, 2025Matthew L.M. Fletcher

Here.

One of my favorite actors. Loved him in The Limey with Luis Guzman. Would have made a kick-ass Sith (if he wasn’t cast as a sad little chancellor).

Kneel before Zod:

This Guardian article is amazing.

Fletcher: Against Generalist Judges

August 19, 2025Matthew L.M. Fletcher

Please check out Against Generalist Judges on SSRN (also available on the Stanford Law Review website).

Here is the “abstract”:

This essay offers yet another proposal for Supreme Court reform. My proposal is rooted in a preference for subject matter expertise in judging. Drawing from arbitration practice, I propose a system in which the parties to federal court litigation — from federal district court all the way to the Supreme Court — negotiate and choose judges from a pool of subject matter experts. The pool would consist of Article III judges who develop subject matter expertise in a given field, say, intellectual property or federal Indian law, and who are available to hear cases over which they are experts, not generalists. Although seemingly radical, there are already formal and informal models for this structure, namely the Federal Circuit, the D.C. Circuit, state courts of criminal appeals, tribal courts, and of course arbitration itself.

*Yes, old man shaking fist at cloud. That’s me.*

California Federal Court Orders Alturas Indian Rancheria Tribal Leader to Pay $68K Contempt Citation

August 19, 2025Matthew L.M. Fletcher

Here is the order in State of California v. Del Rosa (E.D. Cal.):

162 DCT Contempt Order Download

Prior post here.

Oregon COA Affirms Enforcement of Cowlitz Tribal Court Order re: Customary Adoption under ICWA

August 19, 2025Matthew L.M. Fletcher

Here is the opinion in Dept. of Human Services v. T.G.:

Opinion Download

Alaska SCT Affirms Grant of Full Faith and Credit to Native Village of Tanana Court Order under ICWA

August 19, 2025Matthew L.M. Fletcher

Here is the unpublished opinion in Jethro A. v. Native Village of Tanana:

Opinion Download

Chippewa Cree Indians of Rocky Boy Sue Chouteau County for Vote Dilution

August 18, 2025August 19, 2025Matthew Campbell

On August 14, 2025, the Chippewa Cree Indians of the Rocky Boy’s Reservation and two Native voters filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Montana challenging Chouteau County’s unfair, at-large voting system for the Board of County Commissioners. The suit alleges the system unlawfully dilutes the voting strength of Native voters and has denied them any representation on the County Commission for more than a decade.   