Indian Civil Rights Act & Seminole Tribe

[Melissa L. Tatum]

At 05:50 PM 8/16/00 -0500, Sandy Levinson wrote:

>I'm glad that Scott Idleman brought up Seminole Tribe, because one of the
>things I find truly indecent about that case is the Court's basic
>indifference to the fact that the litigant in question was indeed an Indian
>tribe and that there is extraordinarily good reason to be suspicious of the
>willingenss of state political institutions, including courts, to play fair
>with Indian tribes.  One might believe that a court so concerned with
>protecting the "dignity" of "sovereign states" might be even a little be
>concerned with protecting a similar dignity of those sovereign nations
>called Indian tribes.

        If you think this was indecent in Seminole, it was
even worse in Idaho v. Coeur d'Alene.  I've actually gone on
record on this issue and accused the Court of "an insidious
element of racism" in this respect.  In his opinion,
Justice Kennedy (joined by the C.J.) explicitly recognized
that the federal courts play an important role in mediating
structural disputes between federal and state interests.
He completely failed to recognize, however, that
those same structural concerns exist between states and
tribal governments.  Justice Souter called him on this in his
dissent, discussing how state courts have been historically
hostile to the claims of tribes and tribal members.


Melissa L. Tatum
Assistant Professor
University of Tulsa College of Law
melissa-tatum at utulsa.edu