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U.S. Supreme Court deems half of Oklahoma a Native American reservation

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Re: U.S. Supreme Court deems half of Oklahoma a Native American reservation

#461

Post by toss1 »

btilly wrote: post #194

Unlawful acts, performed long enough and with sufficient vigor, are never enough to amend the law. To hold otherwise would be to elevate the most brazen and longstanding injustices over the law, both rewarding wrong and failing those in the right. I disagree with this reasoning. As a counterexample I point you to squatters rights. If I live on your land long and openly enough, my unlawful act will confer ownership of…

Seems that you are trying to bootstrap off of Adverse Possession, where Alan uses Bob's land for a certain period (often 20 years) and ends up owning it.

But it does not work that way

Adverse Possession requires that the use be "open and notorious" and uncontested. [1]

The potential possessor must be using it in a way that is obvious (i.e., not sneaky), and not objected to by the owner.

Sure, the uses of the native lands have been open and notorious, but they have been continuously and vigorously contested.

This time, the owners finally won their contesting of the use of their land.

[1] https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/what-open-notorious-...

Re: U.S. Supreme Court deems half of Oklahoma a Native American reservation

#462

Post by huffmsa »

war1025 wrote: post #156
calvinmorrison wrote: post #128

"We reject that thinking. If Congress wishes to withdraw its promises, it must say so." As with so many controversial court rulings like the ACA mandate case, our courts keep getting put into the decision because of the massive failure that congress is. Congress should either fulfill the promise or not, or whatever. instead the judicial bodies end up making legal judgements with big ramifcations that largely should b…

> because of the massive failure that congress is This is a conclusion I'm coming to more and more. It's easy to blame Presidential overreach or Supreme Court overreach, but the Congress seems to be steadily abdicating responsibility while still managing to get very little of substance accomplished. They are supposed to be the most powerful branch of government, but instead they have deadlocked themselves into useles…

That's exactly the problem. Congress is supposed to do the majority of the work.

Not the executive, and not he judicial (it's not even well defined in the Constitution).

The elected body of representatives is supposed to be where the action is.

They've gradually been failing more and more

Re: U.S. Supreme Court deems half of Oklahoma a Native American reservation

#463

Post by s1artibartfast »

Mangalor wrote: post #196
abeppu wrote: post #57

> The ruling voided McGirt’s sentence of 1,000 years in prison but he could face a new trial in federal court rather than state court. Not changed by this ruling, but it strikes me as really odd that you can sentence someone to prison for that long, or that you would bother. Why not just say life in prison? If your state is 103 years old, saying anything about the next 1000 years seems ... lacking in credibility.

All these legalistic reponses, and yet none really touches the sheer absurdity of sentencing someone to 1,000 years. Doesn't the lifespan of a human being figure in at any point? Talking this way is dehumanizing.

Why do you think taking a legal and numerical approach is dehumanizing? How would you like the human lifespan to figure into the calculation?

Re: U.S. Supreme Court deems half of Oklahoma a Native American reservation

#464

Post by jjeaff »

btilly wrote: post #382
lucasgonze wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're thinking of laches: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laches_(equity) "Laches refers to a lack of diligence and activity in making a legal claim, or moving forward with legal enforcement of a right, particularly in regard to equity" It doesn't apply because nobody is claiming tribal groups failed to protect their interests. They haven't just been blowing off and watching TV all this time.

I am not saying that this is a legal argument for how this case should have been resolved. I'm saying that this is a legal argument against the specific reasoning within the decision. That reasoning being, Unlawful acts, performed long enough and with sufficient vigor, are never enough to amend the law. And yet here is a well-established example where an unlawful act, performed long enough and with sufficient vigor,…

When you take over land by squatting, you aren't "amending the law". You are amending land records using the judicial system. So I don't think the comparison holds up.

And considering that these Indian tribes have been fighting for their land since the beginning, it also doesn't really meet the criteria of someone squatting unnoticed on some land.

If someone just started building on your land right now, and you filed a complaint and called the police and no one would come to help you remove them legally for a decade, they aren't going to eventually just get title to your land. Filing complaints and calling the police has disputed their claim.

Re: U.S. Supreme Court deems half of Oklahoma a Native American reservation

#465

Post by [deleted] »

btilly wrote: post #411
ddingus wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good. The natives deserve a fair shake and the land is roomy enough for people to get along and work together. Forcing that is a damn good thing. The USA has a lot to account for, and it is very sick. Rough roads ahead. Maybe they lead to better places. I do not feel good about the last 4 or so decades of travel. As a people, maybe world, we may well be better for going down this road.

For the record I have a brother living on a native reservation. I am well aware of exactly how horrible our past and continuing treatment of the natives have been. And strongly support fixing our ongoing treatment of them. However I also strongly believe that our future prosperity is based more on current actions than past circumstances. And therefore believe that attempts to redress long past ills are actively harmf…

[deleted]

Re: U.S. Supreme Court deems half of Oklahoma a Native American reservation

#466

Post by rootusrootus »

mac01021 wrote: post #455

What are the implications of this for non-tribe-members who live and have business on the land in question?

Unresolved. All they've really judged is the jurisdiction of the state government over tribal members in this area of the state. It does not affect non-tribal members. And it may also only apply to tribal members who have committed crimes against other tribal members.

So the scope is very limited at this point, but it does open the door for more interesting discussions.

Re: U.S. Supreme Court deems half of Oklahoma a Native American reservation

#467

Post by giantg2 »

vkou wrote: post #347
giantg2 wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if I had standing, it would never make it up courts because the oligarchy (judges) decide whether it is worthy or not. Just look at all the split decisions that SCOTUS leaves in place by declining to hear. Logically one of those two plaintiffs is being screwed.

Worthyness only matters when the matter goes up to the SC. There are many layers of courts below them. If the SC decides the matter is not worthy, that doesn't mean that no decision is reached - it just means that the decision of the lower court is binding.

Yes, but it may be based on a flawed precedent that only the supreme court can overturn. There are also many circuit decisions which conflict with each other that SCOTUS has refused to address. In these instances the court is allowing one of those two plaintiffs to be screwed.

Re: U.S. Supreme Court deems half of Oklahoma a Native American reservation

#468

Post by nostrademons »

brandmeyer wrote: post #384
ISL wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While in effect it is abdicating, in reality, Congress is spinlocked by indecision. There are deep divides between the branches of the electorate that have brought the representatives to office, as the United States faces a number of divisive issues. Those divides, and a preference for combat over compromise, leave us deadlocked. The center is there for the first party that chooses to leave its entrenchement. When Co…

> The center is there for the first party that chooses to leave its entrenchment. Unfortunately, that just isn't so. The evidence of the last three decades has been that every time the Democrats compromised a little, the Republicans just moved further to the right and re-entrenched themselves.

The opportunity probably isn't for an existing political party to move to the center - it's for a third party to come up the center, capitalize on the two major parties being so obsessed with making the other lose that they can't articulate a clear reason why they should win, and capture the voters who have become cynical about politics altogether.

Re: U.S. Supreme Court deems half of Oklahoma a Native American reservation

#469

Post by BoiledCabbage »

lostapathy wrote: post #406
brandmeyer wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The center is there for the first party that chooses to leave its entrenchment. Unfortunately, that just isn't so. The evidence of the last three decades has been that every time the Democrats compromised a little, the Republicans just moved further to the right and re-entrenched themselves.

Don't fool yourself - both sides think the other is guilty of this.

But yet again, while both sides may feel this way, when measured objectively (as has been done) it's shown that almost all of the sudden polarization of the past 30 years has come from the right continuously moving further right.

Re: U.S. Supreme Court deems half of Oklahoma a Native American reservation

#470

Post by antics »

NicolasGorden wrote: post #415
antics wrote: post #130

Just a couple notes here from a person of tribal descent (I am Wasq'u, a tribe in the PNW), for those trying to make sense of it. This ruling, as I understand it, resolves a narrow technicality—but that technicality has potentially enormous implications. The Court has only decided that the federal [EDIT: state! sorry!] government has no prosecutorial jurisdiction against citizens of the so-called "Five Civilized Trib…

Do you know if this means that the land on which buildings are built could be taxed by the tribes? I live in the desert in CA and here most buildings built on Indian reservations pay a yearly leasing fee. It would be such a huge power shift for the tribal nations. It's one of those things that could ripple through the system or hit some stone wall I'm unaware of. Really interested to know what will happen.

They do not. I address this in my answer:

> They did not decide things like: Do the tribes get the taxes from people living in Tulsa? Do non-natives have to abide by rules of the respective nations? Does the tribal government have the ability to reclaim land through land-for-trust? And so on.

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