| 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. |