Here:
Lower court materials here.
Supreme Court
Bird v. Three Affiliated Cert Petition [sovereign immunity]
Here is the petition in Bird v. Tribal Business Council of the Three Affiliated Tribes of the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation:
Question presented:
Does inclusion of a mandatory arbitration clause in an Agreement with an Indian Tribe waive the Tribe’s sovereign immunity?
Eighth Circuit materials:
District court materials here.
Fletcher Draft Paper: “Federal Indian Law as Method”
Please check out “Federal Indian Law as Method,” likely forthcoming in the University of Colorado Law Review. Here is the abstract:
This Essay is written in the shadow of a series of noxious attacks on core principles of federal Indian law, most notoriously Haaland v. Brackeen, a challenge to the constitutionality of the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA). The Supreme Court did not reach the merits of the equal protection challenges, but during oral argument, several judges expressed skepticism that Congressional Indian affairs enactments that grant privileges or preferences to Indian people could survive scrutiny under an equal protection analysis. Justice Kavanaugh, one of the judges most interested in the equal protection claims, wrote separately to highlight these issues, asserting that “the equal protection issue is serious.”
The parties siding with ICWA’s constitutionality argued to the Court that the Mancari case is a guide, whereas the opponents to ICWA’s constitutionality wanted to Court to ignore the case altogether. This Essay is a full-throated defense of the Mancari as a method of constitutional interpretation. Not only is the Mancari method correct, it is also the only justifiable method. This Essay proceeds with a short background on federal Indian law and its default interpretative rules. Next, the Essay surveys the application of and challenges to the Mancari method. Finally, the Essay concludes with a comparison of the methods proposed to replace or displace the Mancari method.
This Essay was prepared for the 31st Annual Rothgerber Symposium at Colorado Law School.
Connecticut Public Radio Show on Brackeen and Ned Blackhawk’s New Book
Here.
Native America Calling on the Affirmative Action and Student Loans Cases
Here.
ACS Broken Law Podcast on Brackeen Featuring Wenona Singel
Here is “A Win for Tribal Sovereignty.”
5Qs for Fletcher on Haaland v. Brackeen & LDF v. Coughlin
From U of M law school, here.
An excerpt:
ICWA was always a part of my scholarly agenda, largely because ICWA is such an important part of virtually every Native person’s personal history. My writing partner and spouse Wenona Singel can trace the removals of her ancestors from the 1830s all the way to the 1970s. Our children are the first generation of children in her family to not be removed since the 1830s. I began to focus on the constitutional defense of ICWA intensely after a 2013 Supreme Court decision, Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl, where the Court questioned the constitutionality of the Act. Within a couple years, constitutional challenges to ICWA were swarming the courts. Occasionally joined with Singel, who was using other media to tell her family’s story, I began to write systematically on each constitutional issue in an effort to push back on the narrative that ICWA was somehow constitutionally suspect. I focused on congressional Indian affairs powers, anti-commandeering and federal preemption, equal protection, and non-delegation.
Turtle Talk 
You must be logged in to post a comment.