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Explaining Indigenous Peoples’ Success in State Supreme Courts: Party Capability, Judicial Selection, and Representation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 October 2022

Rebecca A. Reid  and
Todd A. Curry
Rebecca A. Reid
Affiliation:
University of Texas at El Paso, USA
Todd A. Curry*
Affiliation:
University of Texas at El Paso, USA
*
Contact the corresponding author, Todd A. Curry, at tacurry@utep.edu.
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Abstract

The struggles Indigenous Peoples face are unique from other minority groups living in the United States because they exist in an odd, semisovereign status. While the US Constitution outlines that First Nations are sovereign entities, current federal law and policies hold that tribes are simultaneously sovereign and not sovereign. Using an original data set consisting of all cases involving Indigenous Peoples before state supreme courts from 1995 to 2010, we find Indigenous Peoples are more likely to receive positive judicial outcomes when the judiciary is elected and the indigenous population of the state is relatively high.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Law and Courts , Volume 9 , Issue 1 , Spring 2021 , pp. 69 - 87
Copyright
© 2021 by the Law and Courts Organized Section of the American Political Science Association. All rights reserved.

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Footnotes

As members of the El Paso region, we acknowledge that we are in the unceded territories of the Indigenous Peoples who are the guardians and keepers of this land, both throughout history and in contemporary times: the Tigua, Mansos, Sumas, Ndé, the Piros, Mescalero Apache, Chiricahua Apache, Tarahumara, Yaqui, Jumano, Comanche, Kiowa, Rarámuri, Tohono O’odham, Yaqui, Kickapoo, Diné, Hopi, Zapotec, Mixtec, Aztec-Nahua-Mexica, Huichol, Tepehuan, Coahuilteco, Chichimeca, and the other Native communities who comprise our multinational region. As scholars and people who reside and work in these lands, we respect and honor the millennia-long history of Native peoples on this land and their ongoing presence today.

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