Stanford Journal of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties

Michael Doran on Exceptionalism and Assimilationism in Federal Indian Law

October 11, 2024Matthew L.M. Fletcher

Michael Doran has published “Exceptionalism and Assimilationism in Federal Indian Law” in the Stanford Journal of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties. PDF

Abstract:

This article argues that federal Indian law is located at the intersection of two competing paradigms: exceptionalism, under which Indian law is considered fundamentally different from the rest of U.S. public law; and assimilationism, under which differences between Indian law and the rest of U.S. public law are minimized or denied. The Supreme Court’s failure to resolve the conflict between these two paradigms produces doctrinal inconsistencies (although not, as some prominent scholars maintain, doctrinal incoherence). This article further argues that the conflict of these paradigms ultimately derives from two rival conceptions of Native sovereignty. First is the idea of autochthonous Native sovereignty – that is, an inherent sovereignty that predates contact and colonization, that does not depend on the U.S. Constitution, and that persists unless and until voluntarily surrendered or involuntarily extinguished. Second is the idea of heterochthonous Native sovereignty – that is, a sovereignty that derives primarily from the federal government and that generally remains subordinate to the demands of ordinary federalism under the U.S. Constitution. Finally, this article argues that the assimilationism paradigm should be rejected in favor of unambiguous commitments to autochthonous Native sovereignty and Indian law exceptionalism.

“Tribal Consent” Draft Now Available

September 26, 2011Matthew L.M. Fletcher1 Comment

My paper, “Tribal Consent,” is available for download on SSRN. It’s a draft, perhaps even messier than my usual drafts. Constructive criticism welcome to my regular email address.

Here is the abstract:

Tribal consent to federal statutes, regulations, and cases that decide matters critical to American Indian people and Indian tribes long has been lacking. The nineteenth and twentieth century Supreme Court cases are replete with efforts by Indians and tribes to avoid the dictates of many of these laws and regulations that directly injured tribal interests, almost always to no avail. Congress legislated, the Executive branch acted, and the Supreme Court either walked away or upheld the law and its enforcement. Conversely, tribal governance has been dramatically altered in recent decades in part by the notion that non-Indians and non-tribal entities have not consented to assertions of tribal government authority over them. This lack of consent is meaningful because Indian tribes are not beholden to the dictates of the American Constitution (nor could they be), and so the nonmembers could be subject to governmental authority unfettered by individual constitutional rights.

The first part of this paper is a short history of the incorporation of Indian tribes into the American policy, largely without the consent of Indian tribes and Indian people. The second part moves beyond the discussion of the lack of tribal consent to federal and state governance, and how that lack of consent actually generated the legal and political justification for Congressional (and federal) plenary power over Indian affairs. The third part describes how express and literal consent has come to dominate federal common law on tribal authority over nonmembers. This part explores the irony of introducing nonmembers in vast numbers into Indian country without tribal consent, and then forcing tribal governments to acquire literal consent from those nonmembers in order to govern them. The fourth, and last, part argues for a theory of tribal consent. Unlike the vague and even fictional consent espoused by thinkers such as Justice Kennedy, and denigrated by critics who bemoan its limitations, tribal consent theory should be explored and integrated in federal Indian law. In fact, the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples requires that states acquired the free and informed consent of Indigenous governments and people before taking action detrimental to those peoples, giving rise to a kind of literal consent theory and practice desperately needed in American Indian affairs.

Chi-miigwetch to the Stanford Journal of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties offering a home to this paper.