Columbia Law Review

New Scholarship on Tribal Taxation Authority

Matthew L.M. Fletcher

Alex Zhang has posted “The Other Taxation: Tribes, Territories, and Fiscal Autonomy,” forthcoming in the Columbia Law Review, on SSRN.

Here is the abstract:

Native Americans pay taxes. Residents of the territories do not. Both live with the legacy of American imperialism. Both seek the elusive fiscal self-governance and autonomy promised by Congress. The Supreme Court—through preemption, the plenary-power doctrine, and tax interpretive principles—has hollowed out the Native tax base, forcing tribes to compete fiercely with Congress, states, and localities for revenue. By contrast, territorial residents pay no federal or state taxes on territorial-sourced income by edicts of Congress and geography. But such tax exemption enabled the creation of incentive regimes that have only invited more criticism of subordination. This Article argues that the conceptual underpinnings of the divergent tax treatment of tribes and territories are unsound. Under a more robust vision of fiscal autonomy, judicial limits on Native tax sovereignty are misguided. The territories’ wide latitude in designing revenue streams merits heightened scrutiny. While imperfect, a uniform, nonrefundable federal income-tax credit for tribal and territorial taxes paid is a promising path forward. This Article thus provides the first systematic study of subfederal taxation beyond states and localities—the “other” American taxation often overlooked in scholarship.

Grant Christensen on the Right to Protest in Indian Country

Matthew L.M. Fletcher

Grant Christensen has published “The Right to Protest in Indian Country” in the Columbia Law Review.

Here is the abstract:

From April 2016 until February 2017, thousands of people gathered along the Cannonball River on the border of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation to protest the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline. In response, state officials tried to close down roads leading to the Reservation, considered legislation that would immunize drivers who struck protesters with vehicles, and arrested hundreds of peaceful demonstrators. The #NoDAPL protests built upon a legacy of resistance by Indigenous communities against the actions of the United States. While the history of Indigenous resistance predates the nation’s founding, the power to police protest activities on tribal lands has changed markedly.

This Symposium Piece considers the right to protest in Indian country. It confronts the framework that apportions regulatory and adjudicatory power over protest activity occurring on tribal land and suggests that such regulation ought to be left entirely to the tribal sovereign. Alternatively, it argues that state regulation of protest activity in Indian country is an infringement on tribal governments’ right to make their own laws or is otherwise preempted by overwhelming tribal and federal interests. This Piece further recognizes that while the United States could impose regulations on protest activity, there are strong prudential factors that suggest it should defer regulation to the tribal sovereign. By subjecting the right to protest in Indian country solely to regulations imposed by tribal government, the United States would be respecting tribal sovereignty.

Tanner Allread on SCOTUS’ Improper Use of Indian Removal Era Analysis in Modern Day Indian Law Cases

Matthew L.M. Fletcher

W. Tanner Allread has published “The Specter of Indian Removal: The Persistence of State Supremacy Arguments in Federal Indian Law” in the Columbia Law Review. PDF

Abstract:

In the 2022 case of Oklahoma v. Castro-Huerta, the Supreme Court departed from one of the foundational cases in federal Indian law, Worcester v. Georgia. Chief Justice John Marshall’s 1832 opinion had dismissed state power over Indian Country. But in Castro-Huerta, the Court took precisely the kind of arguments about state power that Chief Justice Marshall rejected in Worcester and turned them into the law of the land—without any recognition of the arguments’ Indian Removal–era origins.

This Article corrects the Court’s oversight. Relying on rarely utilized archival sources, it provides a historical narrative of the development of what the Article terms the theory of state supremacy, first articulated by the southern state legislatures in the Removal Era to justify state power over Native nations and eradicate Native sovereignty. Even though Worcester rejected this theory, Supreme Court Justices and state litigants have continued to invoke its tenets in Indian law cases from the late nineteenth century to the present. Castro-Huerta, then, is just the latest and most egregious example. And the decision’s use of Removal-era arguments revives the specter of Indian Removal in the present day.

This Article reveals that the continued use of state supremacy arguments defies constitutional law and federal Indian affairs policy, produces an inaccurate history of Native nations and federal Indian law, and perpetuates the racism and violence that characterized the Removal Era. Ultimately, this Article seeks to counter future attacks on tribal sovereignty and combat the broader revival of long-rejected federalism arguments.

Greg Ablavsky and Tanner Allread on How Indigenous Peoples Debated the U.S. Constitution

Matthew L.M. Fletcher

Gregory Ablavsky and W. Tanner Allread have posted “We the (Native) People?: How Indigenous Peoples Debated the U.S. Constitution,” forthcoming in the Columbia Law Review, on SSRN.

Here is the abstract:

The Constitution was written in the name of the “People of the United States.” And yet, many of the nation’s actual people were excluded from the document’s drafting and ratification based on race, gender, and class. But these groups were far from silent. A more inclusive constitutional history might capture marginalized communities’ roles as actors, not just subjects, in constitutional debates.

This Article uses the tools of legal and Native history to examine how one such group, Indigenous peoples, argued about and with the U.S. Constitution. It analogizes Native engagement to some of the foundational frames of the “Founding” to underscore its significance for current constitutional discourse. Like their Anglo-American neighbors, Native peoples, too, had a prerevolutionary constitutional order—what we here dub the “diplomatic constitution”—that experienced a crisis during and after the Revolution. After the Constitution’s drafting, Native peoples engaged in their own version of the ratification debates. And then, in the early republic, Native peoples both invoked and critiqued the document as they faced Removal.

This Article’s most important contribution is proof of concept, illustrating what a more inclusive constitutional history might look like. Still, some of the payoffs are doctrinal: broadening the “public” in original public meaning, for instance. But the more significant stakes are theoretical. As this Article contends, by recognizing Indigenous law and constitutional interpretations as part of “our law”—in other words, the pre- and post-constitutional legal heritage of the United States—Native peoples can claim their role as co-creators of constitutional law.

Angela Riley & Sarah Glenn Thompson on Dual Sovereignty and Indian Country Crimes

Matthew L.M. Fletcher

Angela Riley & Sarah Glenn Thompson have posted “Mapping Dual Sovereignty and Double Jeopardy in Indian Country Crimes,” recently published in the Columbia Law Review, on SSRN.

Here is the abstract:

The Double Jeopardy Clause guarantees no individual will be put in jeopardy twice for the same offense. But, pursuant to the dualsovereignty doctrine, multiple prosecutions for offenses stemming from the same conduct do not violate the Clause if the offenses charged arise under the laws of separate sovereigns, even if the laws are otherwise identical. The doctrine applies to tribal prosecutions, but its impact in Indian country is rarely studied. Such an inquiry is overdue, particularly as the scope of crimes potentially subject to dual tribal and federal prosecutions has broadened in recent years. This Article is the first to undertake a preliminary examination of the dual-sovereignty doctrine in the tribal–federal context and describe the complex interplay between the doctrine and the rest of the criminal law fabric in Indian country. Perhaps most significantly, it includes an original typology highlighting when a defendant may be subject to the doctrine, which sovereigns have the authority to prosecute, pursuant to what source of power each sovereign operates, and when and how the sequence of prosecutions matters, if at all. This leads to the Article’s central thesis: Indian tribes are separate sovereigns with inherent sovereignty, and, under current conditions, the dual-sovereignty doctrine plays a central role in ensuring safety in Indian country. The doctrine’s application in Indian country, however, creates unique complexities that may threaten tribal sovereignty and raise issues of unfairness for defendants. This Article offers numerous reforms—some highly ambitious and others more modest—to address these issues.

two police officers staring at each other in the style of miro

Columbia Law Review Note on Tribal Adjudicatory Jurisdiction

Matthew L.M. Fletcher

Here is “The Shrinking Sovereign: Tribal Adjudicatory Jurisdiction Over Nonmembers in Civil Cases,” (PDF) published in the Columbia Law Review.

Here is the abstract:

Tribal jurisdiction over nonmembers is limited to two narrow areas: consensual economic relationships between tribes and nonmembers, and nonmember activity that threatens tribal integrity. Even within these two narrow fields, the Supreme Court has stated that tribal adjudicatory power over nonmembers—the authority to decide legal rights of individuals, usually in a trial-like setting—cannot exceed the tribe’s legislative power over nonmembers—the power to regulate nonmember activity through the enactment of legislation and regulation.  This raises a question that the Court has acknowledged but never answered: whether a tribe may exercise adjudicatory authority over nonmembers as a result of its legislative power. More simply put, is a tribe’s adjudicatory jurisdiction over nonmembers less than, or equal to, its legislative power?

 

This Note argues that tribes should have concurrent regulatory and adjudicatory jurisdiction over nonmembers in disputes based on consensual economic relationships, but tribal regulation concerning tribal integrity should be subject to greater federal court oversight.  Tribal courts should have presumptive jurisdiction to enforce tribalintegrity regulations; however, proof that the tribal court is unfair or inaccessible to nonmembers should permit federal courts to intervene. By drawing on analogous principles in administrative law, civil procedure, and the law of federal courts, this Note provides a workable solution that is consistent with existing Supreme Court tribal law jurisprudence, that conforms with the normative values shaping jurisdiction in other contexts, and that also respects tribal sovereignty.

Columbia Law Review Article on Constitutionality of VAWA/TLOA-Type Statutes

Matthew L.M. Fletcher

Zachary S. Price has published “Dividing Sovereignty in Tribal and Territorial Criminal Jurisdiction” in the Columbia Law Review.

Here is the abstract:

In both federal Indian law and the law regarding United States territories, the Supreme Court in recent decades has shown increasing skepticism about previously tolerated elements of constitutionally unregulated local governmental authority. This Article proposes a framework for resolving constitutional questions raised by the Court’s recent cases in these areas. Focusing on the criminal context, where the stakes are highest both for individual defendants and for the affected communities, this Article considers three issues: (1) whether and under what circumstances Congress may confer criminal jurisdiction on tribal and territorial governments without requiring that those governments’ enforcement decisions be subject to federal executive supervision; (2) whether double jeopardy should bar successive prosecution by both the federal government and a tribal or territorial government exercising federally authorized criminal jurisdiction; and (3) what, if any, constitutional procedural protections apply when a tribal or territorial government exercises criminal jurisdiction pursuant to such federal authorization.

Through close examination of these three questions, this Article aims to show that framing the analysis in terms of divided sovereignty, and recognizing the close parallels between tribal, territorial, and related federal-state contexts, may yield the most attractive resolutions that are viable in light of the Supreme Court’s recent decisions. This Article contrasts this approach with an alternative framework that would organize the analysis around a distinction between “inherent” and “delegated” governmental authority.

Looks like a fascinating paper from a former OLC attorney. Will study with interest.

Columbia Law Review Note on State Discrimination against Indians

Matthew L.M. Fletcher

Shira Kieval has published “Discerning Discrimination in State Treatment of American Indians Going Beyond Reservation Boundaries” in the Columbia Law Review. Here is the abstract:

Generally, federal Indian law cases focus on jurisdiction inside of Indian Country. Occasionally, however, challenges arise about the application of state law to American Indians outside of Indian Country. In 1973, and again in 2005, the Supreme Court announced that “[a]bsent express federal law to the contrary, Indians going beyond reservation boundaries have generally been held subject to nondiscriminatory state law otherwise applicable to all citizens of the State.” While this statement is fairly accurate historically, it provides practically no direction for states, tribes, or lower courts to apply the rule in specific instances. Since American Indians are members of three distinct American political groups—Indian tribes, the states within which they reside, and the United States—how is discrimination to be discerned? How explicit must federal law be, and how much flexibility do states have in interpreting Congress’s directives? How is the Supreme Court maxim to be applied in the context of state-tribe negotiations, which have become a practical necessity for coexistence but are only occasionally addressed by federal legislation? This Note looks to the roots and rationale of the Supreme Court pronouncement, situating it inside of a larger picture of how states may, must, and cannot treat American Indian state citizens. Ultimately, it provides a framework and four specific rules for applying the Supreme Court pronouncement in disputes regarding the power of states over American Indians beyond the borders of Indian Country, and the rights of those American Indians vis-` a-vis the states.

Little Traverse Bay Bands et al. v. Great Spring Waters & Engler

Matthew L.M. Fletcher

In 2002, the three Michigan Ottawa tribes sued Great Spring Waters & Governor Engler over the State’s granting of rights to take millions of gallons of water from mid-Michigan’s water table — a sweetheart deal if there ever was one. The tribes sued under the Water Resources Development Act of 1986, but there was no cause of action and the district court dismissed the action. The tribes did not appeal.

Here is the motion to dismiss: Motion to Dismiss

Here is the Tribes’ response, plus an exhibit: Response Brief + Exhibits

Here is the reply brief: Reply Brief

Here is the order dismissing the case: Opinion

The tribes chose not to bring claims based on the treaty rights they had established in United States v. Michigan. At some point, we expect tribes to bring treaty claims in the environmental protection context — see our MSU Law Review paper.
There has been a fair amount of scholarly commentary on the case, such as this student note in the Columbia Law Review and this paper in the Vermont Journal of Environmental Law.