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Locating important Indian case law is a snap if you know where to go. For those of
you who don't have regular or easy access to a well-equipped library, you can find almost
any decision online. Even if you aren't looking for a specific resource, these
tools can help you research information about your tribe and other current events like gaming, treaty rights, and
relationships with local, state, and the federal government.
Your first step for finding decisions should be the
Supreme Court Decisions
page at the Tribal Court Clearinghouse. You'll get a summary of the most recent cases and
links to the relevant documents. Its always the best way to get informed on the important cases that
affect Indian Country today.
If you're interested in older cases not listed at the Clearinghouse,
FindLaw will get you every decision
from the Supreme Court post 1893. If you are ahead of the game and know the citation,
you can usually get the full text quickly. For a gaming example, you know the
citation for the landmark California gaming case is California v. Cabazon
480 U.S. 202 (1991) (The State
cannot regulate Indian gaming). The URL will be:
http://laws.findlaw.com/US/480/202.htm. Pretty straightforward.
But if you don't know the full citation (or if FindLaw changes their site) you can
use the FindLaw search box and type in
as much as you know. Say you forgot the year and citation of the case mentioned, you could
type:
Its useful to type it in ALL CAPS and to use "V." FindLaw will return the matches in
reverse chronological order and our case pops up 3rd in the list.
Iff you are doing general research about a tribe or you don't have a specific
case in mind, you can try typing in a tribe name and see what comes back.
However, for these types of searches, FindLaw can either return too much or
nothing at all.
Your best avenue is the Indian Law Collection at the Cornell Law School. Their
Indian
Law quick search page will return Indian Law cases from 1990 to the present. It searches the
summaries rather than the entire decision, so it will generally return more relevant cases to your
general query such as submitting the name of a tribe.
For historic cases like Worcester v. Georgia from 1832? FindLaw and
the Cornell summary search won't find these. Luckily, the Cornell Law School has another quick search
for
historic Indian law decisions. You'll find the important Cherokee decisions here like Worcester
and Cherokee Nation v. Georgia. One thing we always find interesting about historic decisions
are their length--short and to the point.
Next week, we'll look at finding local cases from the Circuit Courts throughout the US.
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