Supreme Court – Page 82

One of the primary goals of the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) is to limit the influence or bias of state workers in decisions placing American Indian children out of their home and community.¹ While this focus usually concerns state social workers, the officials who most often seek removal of a child, or the courts, the body that issues the orders and opinions, guardians ad litem (GALs) receive less attention.² Despite this lack of attention, GALs exert a similar level of influence as state social workers. In Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl,³ the role of the GAL was unusual but critical – the GAL, while officially appointed by the court, was handpicked by the adoptive parents.⁴The role of the GAL remains understudied in the ICWA literature, though GALs continue to exert enormous influence in the courts. Unfortunately, many GALs throughout the nation subvert the national policy embodied by the ICWA by advocating against the implementation of the statute in case after case.⁵

There are three other papers in the symposium:

Perspective I by Professor Barbara Ann Atwood is available here,

Perspective II by Professor James G. Dwyer is available here, and

Perspective III by Professors Naomi Cahn and June Carbone is available here.

Tulsa World Coverage Of Cherokee Nation Filing in Legal Fees Case

November 23, 2013ilpc

Here.

Also the ICT article is here.

Harvard Law Review Comment on Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl

November 20, 2013November 20, 2013Matthew L.M. Fletcher

Here.

An excerpt:

It is this very inability to escape uncertainty, qualification, and conflict that ultimately situates Adoptive Couple in the Court’s parental rights canon and that suggests its ongoing significance. Like its predecessors, Adoptive Couple is another deeply divided and closely fought decision, which refuses to wholly deny the power of biology even as it insists upon proactive parenting and affective relationships. The conditions and disclaimers embedded in the case’s holding, taken together with the equal conviction and fervor of both opposing opinions, thus serve as proof of the interminability of such judicial debates about the family.94 Further, the Court’s very willingness to engage in a stark contest over biology versus family in a case that by no means required it — and to engage vigorously, even viciously — seems a harbinger of things to come: in an age of momentous changes in the composition of the family, alluded to both in the decision and in other decisions of the Term, questions regarding which relationships and nontraditional ties warrant judicial protection promise to appear with ever more frequency and complexity. As Adoptive Couple shows, however, the Court remains mired in the same disputes it first unleashed forty years earlier, still grappling with the fundamental tension between nature and nurture. Yet this irresolution and ongoing struggle may well be a cause for comfort rather than concern, a sign that the essential questions about the most essential ties and relationships remain open for investigation and reinvestigation.

Supreme Court Grants SG’s Motion to Share Argument Time in Michigan v. Bay Mills

November 18, 2013Matthew L.M. Fletcher

Here is today’s order list.

Two Important ICT Commentaries on Michigan v. Bay Mills

November 6, 2013November 6, 2013Matthew L.M. Fletcher

The first commentary is from Native Nations Institute commentators Ryan Seelau and Dr. Ian Record:

Will the Supreme Court Use Bay Mills Case to Blow Up Tribal Sovereignty?

The second commentary is from Gabriel Galanda and Ryan Dreveskracht of Galanda Broadman:

The Bay Mills Buck Stops With NIGC

Alaska Seeks Supreme Court Review of Alaska Native Susbistence Rights under Katie John

November 5, 2013Matthew L.M. Fletcher2 Comments

Here is the petition in Alaska v. Jewell:

State of Alaska Petition and Appendix

Questions presented:

1. Whether the Ninth Circuit properly held—in conflict with this Court’s decisions—that the federal reserved water rights doctrine authorizes the unprecedented federal takeover of Alaska’s navigable waters sanctioned by the 1999 Rule.
2. Whether the Ninth Circuit properly proceeded on the premise—which also conflicts with this Court’s decisions—that ANILCA could be interpreted to federalize navigable waters at all given Congress’s silence on the Act’s application to navigable waters.

Lower court materials here.