A case that I suspect has a pretty good shot at being heard by the Supreme Court, Jones v. Jennings, will be on the Court’s conference agenda for January 18, 2008. The case involves the smashing of the Narragansett Tribe’s fledgling smokeshop by state officers. Jones, the police officer, broke the ankle of Jennings, a tribal member, during the conflagration (which was caught on tape and played all over Indian Country for months).
In particular, the questions presented are:
Here is the entire set of Plains Commerce Bank v. Long Family Land and Cattle Co. materials, with the addition of two tribal court lower court orders:
ETA: Final SCOTUS decision has been added to this post as well.
The cert opp in MacArthur v. San Juan County is here — San Juan County Cert Opp
Our previous post with the cert petition is here.
The Supreme Court’s decision to grant certiorari in Plains Commerce Bank v. Long Family Land & Cattle Co. surprised me a great deal. It proves, I think, that Indian law scholars and practitioners cannot claim to predict how the Supreme Court is going to act (no big surprise there, given how few Indians or Indian lawyers have clerked for the Court), but I also think it shows that the so-called Supreme Court bar can miss one every now and then [SCOTUSBlog’s Petitions to Watch seemed to miss this one].
The Supreme Court agreed to hear Plains Commerce Bank v. Long Family Land and Cattle Co. (No. 07-411). Here and here are our previous posts on this case that include the briefs and other materials. Here is the Court’s order. Opening briefs are due Feb. 14, response briefs due on March 12.
Plains Commerce Bank’s cert petn reply brief is here: Reply Brief
All other materials are at our previous post.
Plains Commerce Bank recently filed a cert petition in this matter, which involves a tribal court judgment against Plains Commerce. The bank argues the tribal court didn’t have jurisdiction over it, despite waiving that argument before the tribal court.
Here are the materials:
The cert petition in MacArthur v. San Juan County was filed on Nov. 12. You can download the petition here:
Justice Blackmun’s papers are starting to appear online. The docket sheets and the cert pool memos of each case in the docket years 1986 through 1993 are now available at this location. However, in order to find anything, you have to know the docket numbers.
I’ve listed all the Indian law cases I could find for those docket years. I used the United States Law Week categorization system, which puts Indian law cert petitions in the “Indians” or (now) “Native Americans” category. It does not do this for unpaid petitions, so my list is non-exhaustive. However, I captured a few important unpaid cert petitions because they were cross-referenced in other cert pool memos.
You can get this concordance at our occasional papers series website. It’s no. 2007-15.
It is a work in progress. Any additional information you have to make the concordance a better document would be much appreciated.
Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Connecticut, Florida, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Massachusetts, Missouri, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, and Utah have just filed an amicus brief supporting the State of Rhode Island’s petition for cert in Carcieri v. Kempthorne.
The brief is here: State Amicus Brief Supporting Cert Petition
Turtle Talk 
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