Daniel Rice

@danielrice.bsky.social

Law prof @ UNC-Chapel Hill. Con Law and Indian Law. Views my own. Bio: https://law.unc.edu/people/daniel-rice/ SSRN: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/cf_dev/AbsByAuth.cfm?per_id=1684746

It bugs me that we're normalising the idea that there's something wrong with long documents, or that they're not "worth" our time. There is huge value in careful thought, in detail and nuance, in exploration, and in the experiential journey that goes alongside that.

Good luck to everyone going on the law teaching market! I wrote up 65 pages of notes with basic information, advice I received, question banks, some rough empirical analysis, and more. It’s a work in progress but hopefully a useful starting point. ssrn.com/abstract=721...

<div> <span> </span><span>Field Notes from the U.S. Law Teaching Market</span> </div>

The U.S. law teaching market is highly competitive and traditionally reliant on specific institutional signals. For non-traditional candidates, accessing the un

ssrn.com

New draft paper on SSRN: "Fact Avoidance," forthcoming in the Harvard Law Review Supreme Court Issue. This Essay identifies a recurring feature where the Court decides presidential power cases entirely on legal grounds without engaging at all with the facts /1 papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

Fact Avoidance

<p><i><span>The legality of the President’s exercise of statutory power depends on questions of both law and fact. Yet courts often focus exclusively on the for

papers.ssrn.com

Ablavsky on State Criminal Jurisdiction in Indian Country

Gregory Ablavsky, Stanford Law School, has posted State Criminal Jurisdiction in Indian Country: A History, which is forthcoming in the Virginia Law Review: In Oklahoma v. Castro-Huerta (2022), the Supreme Court dismantled the long-standing black-letter principle that states lack criminal jurisdiction in Indian country absent congressional authorization by embracing a revisionist historical account emphasizing inherent state sovereignty. The consequences have been predictable: intense uncertainty and ongoing litigation. Oklahoma’s highest courts, for instance, have repeatedly endorsed inherent state jurisdiction over Native people within Indian country, employing Castro-Huerta to distinguish considerable contrary federal law and precedent. The challenge, especially given the current history-minded judiciary, is that the claim that states have never asserted inherent criminal jurisdiction over Indian country is too simplistic and easily disproven, making it tempting to toss out the old rules. But the revisionist claim, advanced by some scholars and embraced by Justice Thomas, that states enjoyed expansive criminal jurisdiction, is also wrong. This Article attempts to offer a more rigorous legal history, moving beyond the handful of Supreme Court decisions to survey every identifiable state and federal case on inherent state criminal jurisdiction in Indian country. It depicts four distinct periods: an initial headlong assault on federal authority (1787–1834) ; an era of "great confusion" in which states pressed on the many uncertainties of federal Indian law (1835–1886) ; the jurisdictional chaos of the allotment era (1880s–1930s); and a period of relative statutory stability (1948–2022) that Castro-Huerta has now abruptly terminated. What this history shows above all is contestation—a cat-and-mouse game in which states seized on ambiguities to claim authority, only to be periodically rebuffed by the federal courts. But the mere existence of past conflict does not support broader state jurisdiction in Indian country. Rather, every conventional method of legal and constitutional interpretation undercuts the argument that such jurisdiction was ever meaningfully positive law. There are also strong normative reasons for skepticism, since state claims of authority were rarely motivated by public safety but were instead tools to facilitate Native dispossession and erode tribal self-governance. By recounting these complexities, the Article challenges the current legal instability that threatens the foundations of modern tribal sovereignty. --Dan Ernst 

dlvr.it

Just finished Keith Richotte's brilliant and hilarious book THE WORST TRICKSTER STORY EVER TOLD. If you want an entertaining and enlightening read about Native America, the Supreme Court, and U.S. Constitution, this is the one.

Bild

Wohoo! And it’s about time… The Oneida Nation endowed a chair for an Indian Law scholar at HLS and they’ve been trying to fill it for DECADES. It took the incredible badass that is Tanner to break down that door finally. So proud and excited. This is a win for Indian Country and for the field!

Tanner Allread@tannerallread.bsky.social · 3mo ago

After a grueling 9 months on the academic job market, I’m thrilled to announce that on July 1, I will start as an Assistant Professor of Law at Harvard Law School! I’m so excited to bring Native American law and legal history to HLS, and I cannot wait to join the incredible faculty there!