[The following is an invited guest post by Keith Richotte, Jr. (Director, Indigenous Peoples Law and Policy Program, and Professor of Law, University of Arizona), introducing The Supreme Court Indian Law Database.]
A critical new resource for scholars of the Supreme Court and Native America is now available: The Supreme Court Indian Law Database. Recently launched, this website offers a number of important features.
- It identifies every Indian law case decided by the U.S. Supreme Court (680 and counting). Listed chronologically, the list has a search function to allow a researcher to find a particular cases or cases easily
- It places each case in one or more categories for identification and comparison. The site has forty-three categories, including plenary power, criminal jurisdiction, treaties, and many others
- It lists every justice of the U.S. Supreme Court and their participation in the cases on the list. It also identifies how the justice voted and if they wrote in a particular case
- The pages for each individual case identifies the other cases on the list that it cites and the cases where it has been cited. For example, Cherokee Nation v. Georgia cites three cases and has been cited forty-eight times
In the future additional search functions will be added to the site. Once running a researcher will be able to easily identify cases decided between a certain date range, or cases that fall under the same four categories, or find out which three justices participated in the same cases or any combination of all three of these things and more.
In addition, there is room for debate for what counts as an Indian law case or for which category a particular case belongs. While acknowledging this certain subjectivity, quite a bit of thought and care went into curating the list. If you have questions about the list or would like to know how it was crafted please visit the methodology page.
Finally, while a lot of thought and care has been put into the list and the website, it is still very new and there is always room for improvement. To that end, if you have any constructive feedback you would like to share please send it to Keith Richotte, the curator of the site and Director of the Indigenous Peoples Law and Policy Program at the James E. Rogers College of Law at the University of Arizona. His email address is at the bottom of the main page.
The hope is that this website will be a valuable resource for practitioners, scholars, students, tribal nations and peoples, and anyone else with an interest in Native America and a desire to see Indigenous peoples thrive. Thank you and happy searching on SCILDB.com!
