Here.
I choked down my bile and said I “liked” the Mets best out of the four godawful choices they give us (Yankees, Mets, and Bosox also make the list). Go Tigs!
Supreme Court
Supreme Court Denied Cert in Native Village of Kivalina v. Exxon Mobil
OSG Recommends Denial of Michigan’s Cert Petition in Vanderbilt Casino Dispute
Here is the brief:
Complete Cert Stage Briefing in Native Village of Kivalina v. ExxonMobil Corp.
Miller v Wright Cert Opposition Brief
Here:
The petition is here. No chance for a grant. I wouldn’t have even filed an opposition….
Second Circuit Briefs in Cayuga Property Tax Dispute with Seneca County
Here are the briefs in Cayuga Indian Nation v. Seneca County:
Cayuga Indian Nation Answer Brief
Lower court materials here.
Blog Post of the Day — “The Frequent Irrelevancy of the Supreme Court”
Possibly the best blog post this year (so far) comes from Sr. federal trial judge Richard George Koft on his great blog Hercules and the Umpire. It is “The Frequent Irrelevancy of the Supreme Court.” Judge Kopf writes from the POV of a federal trial judge:
A lot of what the Supreme Court does is simply irrelevant to what federal trial judges do on a daily basis. Take, for example, the Daubert case that was supposed to be a big deal when it came to expert testimony. Boiled down, Daubert simply said that an expert had to have an adequate foundation for his or her opinion. Well, . . . sure. The “field” absorbed Daubert with little or no change in what was actually going on in most federal trial courts. A similar shrug happened with the “big” pleading case of Bell Atlantic v. Twombly. Very little, if anything, changed “in the field.” Prior to Twombly, most of the time, the goofy cases got weeded out. Same, same after Twombly.
I think the same of is often (maybe not “frequent[ly]” but some of the time) true in Indian law. My vote for most irrelevant Indian law decision of the last ten years is Plains Commerce Bank v. Long Family Land and Cattle Co. The law going in to that case, which involved tribal civil jurisdiction over nonmembers, was that the Montana “exceptions” applied to on-reservation lands owned by non-Indians, and that it was difficult to meet the exceptions. The law after that case? No change whatsoever, with some fairly minor tightening of the second Montana exception where the Chief Justice quoted the Cohen Handbook:
One commentator has noted that “th[e] elevated threshold for application of the second Montana exception suggests that tribal power must be necessary to avert catastrophic consequences.” Cohen §4.02[3][c], at 232, n. 220.
Other than that (which is basically dicta), n0 new law at all. There was no point, other than to throw a bone to a nonmember bank that a tribal jury found to have racially discriminated against tribal members on their commercial loans, a verdict not preserved for review by the bank.
What’s your vote? Comments welcome.
Cert Petition Challenging Nebraska SCT Decision on Good Cause “Exception” to ICWA Tribal Court Transfer Rule
Here is the petition:
Zylena R v. Elise M. Cert Petition
The questions presented:
(1) Whether ICWA prohibits a state court from considering the “best interests of the child” when determining whether “good cause” exists to deny the transfer of an ongoing child welfare case.
(2) Whether ICWA requires a state court to treat a motion to terminate parental rights as a “new proceeding” for purposes of determining whether “good cause” exists to deny the transfer of an ongoing child welfare case.
Lower court decision here.
Atlantic.com: The Most Important Supreme Court Cases You’ve Never Heard Of
Here.
Thanks to Gerald Torres, Elk v. Wilkins makes the list:
Gerald Torres, professor, University of Texas School of Law
In 1879, John Elk renounced his allegiance to his American Indian tribe to go live among the citizens of Omaha. But when he tried to register to vote, the registrar claimed that he was not a citizen. No one disputed that Elk was born within the territorial limits of the United States, but in 1884’s Elk v. Wilkins, the Court ruled that the citizenship clause of the Fourteenth Amendment did not apply to Elk or others like him. The Indian Citizenship Act of 1924 changed this, but the case remains relevant to today’s birthright debate. Some suggest that the children of undocumented immigrants have no more claim to citizenship than Elk did. They are wrong.
Turtle Talk 
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