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Abstract:
Brief parody article about law reviews, socio-economic class, cheese, and the legal professoriate.

Parody, Legal Academy, Professoriate, Privilege, Wealth, Socio-Economics

Abstract:
Little attention is paid to the nature of the high incomes of the rich or to the legal or norm-based obligations the rich owe society. This popular and scholarly inattention reflects the general acceptance of the idea that the rich have earned their high incomes and owe society little. By looking at income equations revealing society's role in high incomes and the obligations of the rich, the Article urges a strengthening of the obligations of the rich and rejects the argument that the legal community ought not consider the moral demands associated with high incomes.

Obligations, Poverty, Income, Duty of Rescue, Wealthy, Privilege, Progressive Taxation

Abstract:
Remittances, the sending of money from immigrants back to their home countries, are the newest anti-poverty, development activity of the poor to be applauded by international institutions and economists. Exceeding foreign aid and private investment to many developing countries, remittances are being hailed as a new, untapped resource with powerful poverty alleviation and potential development attributes. After presenting the poverty, developmental, and economic characteristics of this new transnational connection between immigrants and their loved ones, as well as the dangerous effects of excessive remittance regulation, this Article argues that remittances should be understood as an anti-poverty tool, but not as a route to development.

Remittances, Latin America, Development, Poverty, Law and Development, Microcredit, Land-titling

Abstract:
This Article is an exploration of remittances, the sending of money from immigrants back to their home countries. The Article begins by linking remittances to the excitement and acclaim that micro-lending and land-titling have received. Remittances, as the newest promising anti-poverty, development activity of the poor to be applauded by international institutions and economists, are worthy of close attention. This Article introduces the legal community to remittances, discusses remittance policy challenges, and presents conclusions regarding how to best develop the legal structure given remittance costs and behavior. In order to facilitate an understanding not only of broad theory but also of the practical workings and importance of remittances, general ideas are illustrated using the remittance experience of Latin America and, in particular, El Salvador, as a case study. What is both captivating and potentially dangerous about remittances is how remittances simultaneously represent the ability of vulnerable populations to help themselves and reflect the danger of institutional capture of a phenomenon that should be uniquely the realm of vulnerable populations.

Remittances, Latin American, Development, Poverty

Abstract:
This paper presents the current land regime and nature of economic development found on most Native American reservations, drawing predominantly from the Navajo Nation. It then considers the situation according to (1) neo-classical economics and (2) New Institutional Economics (NIE). The paper begins with the paired assumptions that economic growth can and should reach reservations and that the U.S. and tribal governments can improve upon past performance and institutional arrangements. Policy solutions to reservation commercial and light industrial underdevelopment, corresponding to each economic perspective in turn, are then discussed. The paper broadens the range of policy options available to tribes considering their land use policies and development priorities. The paper is a mixture of law, economic theory, and land use planning.

Law and Economics, Native American, Indian, Reservation, New Institutional Economics

Abstract:
This paper argues that tribes and scholars need to come to grips with the trade-off between trust and self-determination, and that failure to do so-by for example expressing a yearning that the trust doctrine was stronger-will lead to poor choices by tribes. Choices thus need to be based on an understanding of this trade-off and tribes must be aware that exercising self-determination inevitably will lead to a weakening of the trust doctrine over the areas which tribe's assume authority. This point is illustrated using a close analysis of the arguments used by the parties and the Supreme Court's treatment of two Indian Trust Doctrine cases - Navajo Nation and White Mountain Apache. While predictably the scholarship has generally emphasized the Court's failure to fully enforce the trust relationship, this paper's suggestion is that, given the Court's treatment of tribal choices, tribe's must fully understand that exercising their sovereignty in certain spheres can lower enforceable U.S. trust duties. This modest idea - that tribes will be held responsible for their decisions by the courts and therefore need to be deliberate in their exercise of self-determination in particular cases where earlier such cases were controlled by the US government - is actually rather radical in Indian law and as such is likely to open unexplored scholarship and to be significant for tribal leaders.

Indian, Native American, Trust, Self-Determination, Navajo Nation, White Mountain Apache

Abstract:
This paper focuses on the relationship between rural housing and building codes. The paper covers the relationship between the existing urban based literature on housing conditions and the rural housing situation as well as a theoretical exploration of different ways of understanding value in housing. Finally, two rural case studies - the Navajo Nation and a small Colorado subdivision - illustrate the challenges of rural housing code enforcement and demonstrate how officials could benefit from the model.

Rural, Housing, Building Codes, Warranty of Habitability, Indian, Reservation, Rural Poor

Abstract:
This article is an exploration of the assumption, last made by the U.S. Supreme Court in City of Sherrill v. Oneida Indian Nation of New York, that non-Indian property owners are harmed by Indian acquisition and control of land. Accepting for the moment the Court's prioritization of a non-Indian perspective, the article explores (a) what lies behind non-Indian resistance to Indian land ownership, and (b) whether in fact non-Indians are harmed by proximity to Indian land. The article combines in its analysis core property law concepts with an empirical examination of the changes over time in assessed land value of properties located near Indian land.

Indian Law, Property Law, Sherrill, Oneida, Proximity Pricing, GIS

Abstract:
This Article presents the history, controversies, and significance of the Cherokee Nation's treaty-based right to a Congressional delegate. First, it details Cherokee removal from Georgia to west of the Mississippi along with how removal was seen by Cherokees and non-Cherokees at the time. Then, it describes the history of the treaty negotiations that led to the delegate provision in the Treaty of New Echota and places the Cherokee delegate in context by comparing it to other non-voting delegates in Congress. Third, the article considers the challenges the Cherokees would face in seeking to realize the delegate right. The article concludes that even if the challenges - political and Constitutional - prevent the Cherokees from realizing their delegate right, the moral responsibility the U.S. would have to off-set disallowance of the Cherokee delegate suggests that the Cherokees would benefit from pushing for such a delegate.

Congress, Representation, Cherokee, Indian, Removal, Delegate, New Echota

Abstract:
Frequently referred to as customary law, the unique traditions and customs of different Native American tribes are cited by their tribal courts as authoritative and binding law. The recent use of customary law as a mechanism for deciding individual cases is not uniform among tribal court systems as it differs depending upon which tribe's judges are working to place custom into contemporary judicial analysis. Understanding the present role of customary law in tribal law requires first understanding the nature of customary law and then understanding how it is being used. The effect of customary law is dependent upon the place it has in relation to other sources of law from tribal statutes to state common-law. Furthermore, the differing treatment afforded customary law by separate tribal court systems in many ways is a reflection of the degrees of proof required by different courts to establish what is or is not a tribal custom.

Indian, Native American, Customary Law, Tribal Courts, Navajo, Indian Law

Abstract:
In this paper, I argue that tribal governments considering entering into cooperative agreements with federal, state, or local governments ought to maintain a healthy skepticism regarding the non-tribal governments sitting across from tribes at the negotiating table. Using the Williams-Laurence debate regarding the role of the actual state of things in Indian law as a lens for considering cooperative agreements, I conclude that tribes should focus on those cooperative agreement types that best accord with an ambitious understanding of tribal sovereignty.

Indians, Cooperative Agreements, Sovereignty, Native Americans, Tribes

Abstract:
Negative assumptions regarding Indians can be found in the recent decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court, and attention to these assumptions is required if courts are to base their decisions on how Indians and non-Indians actually impact each other. This brief article uses a property and liability rules framework to argue for judicial restraint when considering cases that could limit tribal sovereignty.

Indian, Sovereignty, Oneida, Calabresi and Melamed

Abstract:
This brief article explores the purported requirement that delegates to the U.S. Congress be state representatives, using the Cherokee Nation's treaty-based right to a Congressional Delegate to question assumptions that statehood is or has ever been a requirement for such representation. The article has been published by the Yale Law Journal Pocket.

Indian Law, Cherokee, Congress, Representation, Delegates, New Echota

Abstract:
Professor Philip Frickey's insightful (Native) American Exceptionalism in Federal Public Law eloquently calls upon the Court to reject the siren of seeming coherence; yet his academic tour de force ironically rests upon the same false synthesis and simplification of the varied tribal experiences into a shared set of digestible legal categories. The underlying conceit of federal Indian law is not found principally in the arrogance of plenary power of one sovereign over another, nor even in the harmonizing inclination of the post-1975 cases. Rather, it can be seen in the choice to treat all tribes as subject to the same pan-Indian legal regime.

In this Reply, I draw out the reasons a pan-Indian legal doctrine appeals to both the Court and legal academics and then briefly sketch out what the legal landscape would look like were the Court and academics to take seriously the independent sovereignty of each tribe. Disallowing ourselves the comfort that can be found in the simplicity of treating all tribes interchangeably will lead positively to more ambiguity of the sort Professor Frickey seems to favor and perhaps negatively to greater freedom for the Court to engage in its ad hoc, what feels right decision making. However, regardless of whether the positive or negative effects dominate - and I suspect that the positive effects would control - judicial and academic work that conceptualizes and analyzes tribes independently rightly hedges against the conceit that pan-Indian jurisprudence is appropriate.

Indian Law, Native Americans, Tribal Sovereignty