"Frank Pommersheim’s wonderful paper on the amicus brief strategies in Plains Commerce Bank in the South Dakota Law Review is a starting off point for this (yet another) quick study of Supreme Court adjudication, as is the recent short paper on the rise of the citation to amicus briefs in the Roberts Court.

In short, the Court pays attention to amicus briefs siding with the tribes, discussing them at length, and rejecting the pro-tribal interest arguments uniformly.

Let’s begin with the case name that cites to an amicus brief, and then perhaps a quote from the opinion:

United States v. Jicarilla Apache Nation:

We cannot agree with the Tribe and its amici that “[t]he government and its officials who obtained the advice have no stake in [the] substance of the advice, beyond their trustee role,” Brief for Respondent 9, or that “the United States’ interests in trust administration were identical to the interests of the tribal trust fund beneficiaries,” Brief for National Congress of American Indians et al. as Amici Curiae 5."

Get the Story:
Amicus Briefs in the Supreme Court’s Indian Cases (Roberts Court Era) (Turtle Talk 8/30)

Related Stories:
Turtle Talk: Justice Thomas and his radical vision of Indian law (8/29)