Kathryn E. Fort (MSU) has published “The New Laches: Creating Title Where None Existed” in the George Mason Law Review.  From the introduction:

Recent legal decisions dealing with Indian land claims have been cre-ating title for private property owners where no title previously existed. As has been explored by others, various areas of property law have been turned upside down in order to defeat tribes in court. However, one area, equity, has received special attention from the courts. Specifically, the equitable defenses of laches, acquiescence, and impossibility were used by the United States Supreme Court in City of Sherrill v. Oneida Indian Nation to hand defeat to the Oneida Indian Nation on a tax issue. Since then, lower courts in the Second Circuit have used this precedent to deny Indian land claims altogether. But is the use of these three defenses based on precedent them-selves? A careful examination of City of Sherrill and its progeny reveals that these defenses have in fact been combined to create a new defense, what I will call the “new laches” defense.