Overlawyered » Indian tribes

U.N. enlists U.S. lawprof to scold U.S. on Indian land rights

Walter Olson — Sat, 12 May 2012 15:33:21 +0000

As noted earlier, last week U.N. Human Rights Council rapporteur James Anaya (who also happens to be a lawprof at the University of Arizona) declared the U.S. to be trampling the aboriginal land rights of Indian tribes. I have a new Daily Caller piece pointing out (as I detail at more length in Schools for Misrule) that the U.N.’s involvement with American law school projects is nothing new: “Now the plaintiff’s counsel [in the Western Shoshone claim] of a few years back re-surfaces as the official instrument of a U.N. body, a revolving-door arrangement that is actually quite typical of the international human rights establishment, where a rather small band of crusading law professors, ‘civil society’ activists and Guardian readers around the world seem to take turns investigating each others’, or as the case may be their own, countries for putative human rights violations.” (& Julian Ku, Opinio Juris)

Tags: Arizona, Indian tribes, international human rights, law schools, Schools for Misrule, United Nations

U.N. enlists U.S. lawprof to scold U.S. on Indian land rights is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

International law roundup

Walter Olson — Fri, 11 May 2012 12:41:52 +0000

U.N. rapporteur lectures U.S. on Indian rights, calls for “some form of land restoration” [IPSNews] “So, the UN Wants the U.S. to Return Land to Indian Tribes…” [Claudia Rosett] In Chapters 10 and 11 of Schools for Misrule, I discuss the growing cooperation between Indian land-claim activists in this country and international organizations both within and without of the U.N. system. (More: I expand theme into a Daily Caller piece).
“Union Uses NAFTA To Fight Alabama Immigration Law” [Sean Higgins, IBD]
“UN hunger expert investigates Canada” [Hillel Neuer, National Post]“Everyone’s grievances can thus be transformed into human rights violations” [Jacob Mchangama and Aaron Rhodes, Freedom Rights Project, PDF]
Admittedly, at a “lefty Quaker school in the Northeast”: “You know international law is getting some traction when your fourth-grader is being taught about the Convention on the Rights of the Child.” [Peter Spiro, OJ]
New Third Circuit opinion in remanded U.S. v. Bond case, which tested limits of treaty power, could tee up issue for another SCOTUS outing [Spiro/OJ, FedSoc Blog, Liberty and Law; earlier]
“Canada’s Much Better and Very Different Alien Tort Statute” [Ku/OJ]
Implementation of United Nations’ Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) could draw inspiration from U.S. experience with institutional reform lawsuits [Michael Perlin via Bagenstos]

Tags: alien, Canada, child, disabled rights, immigration law, Indian tribes, international human rights, international law

International law roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

March 5 roundup

Walter Olson — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 05:07:35 +0000

Trial lawyer TV: mistranslation, plaintiff’s experts were instrumental in “Anderson Cooper 360″ CNN story trying to keep sudden-acceleration theory alive [Corp Counsel, Toyota, PDF, background]
“Can I get a form to file a police complaint?” No. No, you can’t [Balko]
Madison County lawyer runs for judgeship [MCRecord; earlier on her columnist-suing past]
RIP Dan Popeo, founder and head of Washington Legal Foundation [Mark Tapscott, Examiner]
Louisiana: “Church Ordered to Stop Giving Away Free Water” [Todd Starnes, Fox via Amy Alkon]
Developer of “Joustin’ Beaver” game files for declaratory judgment against singer Justin Bieber’s trademark, publicity claims [THR, Esq.]
“Why are Indian reservations so poor?” [John Koppisch, Forbes] “Payday loans head to the Indian reservations” [Katherine Mangu-Ward, Reason] Tribal recognition: high-stakes D.C. game where lobbyists get the house rake-off [Chris Edwards, Cato]

Tags: celebrities, churches, Illinois, Indian tribes, Louisiana, Madison County, media bias, police, sudden acceleration, Toyota

March 5 roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

February 27 roundup

Walter Olson — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 05:08:07 +0000

Department of Transportation cracks down on distraction from cars’ onboard information and entertainment systems; Mike Masnick suspects the measure won’t work as intended, as appears to have been the case with early texting bans [Techdirt; earlier here, etc.] “Feds Push New York Toward Full Ban On Electronic Devices In Cars” [Glenn Reynolds, Instapundit; Truth About Cars]
Oh no: Scott Greenfield says he’s ceasing to post at his exemplary criminal defense blog after five years [Simple Justice, Dave Hoffman]
California not entitled to pursue its own foreign policy, at least when in conflict with rest of nation’s: unanimous “blockbuster” decision by en banc 9th Circuit strikes down law enabling insurance suits by Armenian victims [AP, Alford/OJ, Recorder, related, Frank/PoL]
Playboy model’s $1.2M award against Gotham cops is a great day for the tabloids [NYDN]
To hear a pitch for fracking-royalty suits, visit the American Association for Justice convention, or just read the New York Times [Wood, PoL]
What the mortgage settlement did [John Cochrane, earlier]
Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) of 1978 blows up an adoption: “She’s a 2-year-old girl who got shoved in a truck and driven to Oklahoma with strangers.” [Reuters, SaveVeronica.org]

Tags: AAJ, adoption, autos, California, Indian tribes, insurance, legal blogs, mortgages, oil industry, reparations

February 27 roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Oglala Sioux tribe sues beer companies over alcoholism

Walter Olson — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 05:07:43 +0000

“An American Indian tribe sued some of the world’s largest beer makers today, claiming they knowingly contributed to devastating alcohol-related problems on South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.” The Oglala Sioux tribe is asking for $500 million. [AP; Lincoln Journal-Star; Don Surber] More: Jacob Sullum, Ted Frank.

Tags: alcohol, beer and brewers, Indian tribes, Nebraska, South Dakota

Oglala Sioux tribe sues beer companies over alcoholism is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

“And you thought you billed a lot of hours…”

Walter Olson — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 14:58:34 +0000

Ted Frank, who’s challenging the Cobell (Indian trust) class action fees as part of his work with the Center for Class Action Fairness, catches out a lawyer who claims to have worked for more than nine hours a day on the case for 14 years, including a 7-year stretch in which he purportedly worked “an average of eleven hours a day, every day seven days a week without a single day off.” [Above the Law, earlier]

Tags: attorneys' fees, class action settlements, Indian tribes, Ted Frank

“And you thought you billed a lot of hours…” is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

International human rights law roundup

Walter Olson — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 13:52:21 +0000

Recent clips on a subject treated in much more detail in Schools for Misrule:

Claim: Wisconsin Gov. Walker’s reforms to public sector labor law violate international human rights [HRW, Mirer/Cohn, FoxBusiness (views of Marquette lawprof Paul Secunda)] Related: UAW threatens charges against automakers [ShopFloor]
Per some advocates, “right to health” has emerged as an “established international legal precept” even if it is “still to be fully embraced in the United States” [Friedman/Adashi, JAMA]
GWB at risk of arrest if he visits Europe? Or are some of his enemies just posturing? “Bush trip to Switzerland called off amid threats of protests, legal action” [Atlantic Wire, WaPo, Daily Dish and more, Frum Forum, more and yet more]
Oh, good grief: Tennessee solon “proposes law to make following Shariah law a felony” [Tennesseean] More states prepare to join unsound “ban all recogition of international law” movement [Ku, OJ] Background: Volokh.
For those interested in the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples recently given a favorable nod by the Obama administration, a copy of the text is available here [CWB]
“Conceptualizing Accountability in International Law and Institutions” [Anderson, OJ]
Human rights initiative in UK: “Rapists and killers demand right to benefits” [Telegraph] European Court of Human Rights, Human Rights Acts “merely pretexts for judicial activism, argues Alasdair Palmer” [Telegraph]
Claim: U.S. is odd-country-out in international law. Reality check please [Bradford, Posner et al, OJ]
Opponents charge trying Pennsylvania 13 year old for murder as adult could violate international law [AI]

Tags: George W. Bush, Indian tribes, international human rights, international law, labor unions, medical, Tennessee, United Nations, Wisconsin

International human rights law roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Flak for Cobell fees, cont’d

Walter Olson — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 05:21:23 +0000

Criticism continues to mount (“shameful,” “excessive”) over lawyers’ effort to nab $223 million in fees for representing Indian tribes’ interest in the long-running Cobell litigation over management of trust funds. [BLT (quoting former Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D.), and more (DoJ); PoL; earlier here and here (Kilpatrick Stockton lawyer Keith Harper considered for Tenth Circuit appointment)]

Tags: feeing frenzy, Indian tribes

Flak for Cobell fees, cont’d is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

“I’m not embarrassed at all by the fee”

Walter Olson — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 14:49:22 +0000

Plaintiff’s lawyers agreed to seek a maximum of $99.9 million in fees in the settlement of the Cobell class action over federal mismanagement of Indian tribal trust funds. Now, however, a different number has suddenly appeared on the agenda: $223 million. [National Law Journal]

Tags: attorneys' fees, class actions, Indian tribes

“I’m not embarrassed at all by the fee” is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Don’t deprive archaeologists…

Walter Olson — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 18:04:54 +0000

…of access to tribally unaffiliated Indian antiquities and remains, now endangered by new regulations from the Department of the Interior [Robert L. Kelly, New York Times] Earlier on the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) and Kennewick Man controversy here, here, etc.

Tags: Indian tribes, science and scientists

Don’t deprive archaeologists… is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system