The foundational treatise in the field of American tribal law
is Felix S. Cohen's Handbook of Federal Indian Law. “First published in 1941, [this
book] synthesized more than a century and a half of American Indian law. This
treatise …played an important role in both the history of federal Indian law
and in the evolution of American jurisprudence. ..Felix Cohen’s Handbook brought
focus and coherence to [a] confusing welter of sources and, in effect created
the field of federal Indian law…
After Cohen’s death in 1953, the treatise was revised by the Department
of the Interior in 1958 for openly political purposes: to advance the efforts
to terminate the federal government’s relationship with Indian tribes. The 1958
edition stressed the plenary power of the federal government over Indians and Indian tribes and deemphasized tribal sovereignty.
In the Indian Civil Rights Act of 1968, Congress mandated the updating
of several important works in federal Indian law, including the Handbook of Federal Indian Law.”* Today,
Bethany Berger, Thomas F.
Gallivan, Jr. Professor of Real Property Law at UConn School of Law, is co-author
and member of the editorial board of Felix S. Cohen's Handbook of
Federal Indian Law. The later editions focus on the relationships between tribes, the
states and the federal government within the context of civil and criminal
jurisdiction, as well as areas of resource management and government structure.
There are 566 federal
recognized tribes, “domestic, dependent nations” within the United States, each
with powers of self-government that operate within the tribes’ sovereign
territories. Tribal Constitutions, some quite contemporary, are available as
the electronic appendix to the new book, Structuring Sovereignty: Constitutions of Native Nations.
Faye Hadley, Native
American Materials Librarian, University of Tulsa Law Library
Mabee Legal Information Center, has put together the “Native American Legal Research Guide” and a compendium of “Native American Legal Websites”.
For more information, see “Massachusetts
Law About American Indians”: http://lawlib.state.ma.us/subject/about/indians.html
Thank you to the staff at
the Thomas J. Meskill Law Library at UConn School of Law for hosting the LLNE/SNELLA Spring 2014 Meeting : http://library.law.uconn.edu/llne-snella-spring-2014/llnesnella-spring-2014-meeting,
giving law librarians throughout New England the opportunity to learn more
about American Tribal Law and Culture.
*from the
Foreward to Cohen’s Handbook of Federal
Indian Law, 2005 edition, LexisNexis.
