Ways to Integrate Indian Law into Your Curriculum
by
Cynthia Ford

I served as the chief judge of the Suquamish Tribe in western Washington before returning to Montana to teach. I quickly discovered that the published Civil Procedure casebooks compared the state and federal courts but contained nary an entry reflecting the existence, much less the function, of tribal courts.

I set out to ensure that Montana students learn something about tribal courts in their first-year course. I developed a set of materials that I use to teach a two-hour segment on tribal courts after the unit on subject-matter jurisdiction. I have two explicit goals for this segment: to transmit some very basic knowledge, and to interest students in pursuing more advanced courses in Indian law.

After I added this subject to my Civil Procedure course, I began to wonder if and how the teachers were dealing with tribal courts even though the published casebooks ignored the subject. I applied for a grant from the Institute for Law School Teaching to explore this question more thoroughly.

The first part of the project was to survey Civil Procedure teachers throughout the country, asking them to describe their treatment of tribal courts and basic Indian law. One hundred and eighty-three professors replied. One hundred and fifty-nine (87%) indicated that they did not discuss any Indian law concepts. Forty-four (27.5%) of those who currently do not discuss Indian law indicated they would be interested in adding an Indian law component. Twenty-three professors (12.5%) discuss some aspect of Indian law. Ten of these devote one hour or less to the subject; six use two hours; and one spends six hours.

As the second part of my project, I wrote a law review article, Integrating Indian Law into a Traditional Civil Procedure Course, 46 Syracuse L.Rev. 1243 (1996), which discusses the importance of Indian law in general and the role of the tribal courts in the American judicial system in particular. It then describes generally the place of Indian law in legal education, and reports the survey findings about the relatively few courses that broach the subject. The article explores some possible reasons why traditional Civil Procedure teachers and casebooks ignore Indian law. Finally, it advocates inclusion of some basic information about the role and existence of this third, independent court system.

One of the reasons that so few Civil Procedure professors teach about tribal courts is that they don't know much about the subject themselves: many law schools either do not or only recently have begun to teach courses in Indian law and the casebooks and treatises are silent in this area. Even for those with good intentions, venturing into a whole new topic necessarily requires both time and energy.

The third part of my project deals directly with this issue. I have compiled a packet of teaching materials, available through the Institute for Law School Teaching, that includes cases to copy and assign to students, along with detailed teaching notes for an introductory lecture and for each case. Three are cases decided by the United States Supreme Court that stress the federal policy of tribal self-government and the integral role of the tribal courts in tribal sovereignty. These landmark cases also govern the interplay between tribal and federal courts. The packet also contains two cutting-edge cases currently on appeal, which the students can use to apply their understandings of the concepts they've just studied, and which they should be able to follow during their law school studies.

I hope that my "cookbook" approach will make it feasible for more Civil Procedure teachers to follow my advice and add this subject to their syllabi. Indian law is also applicable to other courses in the orthodox law school curriculum, such as property, estates, constitutional law, federal courts, and family law. A series of teaching packets in these areas would likewise encourage these professors to expand their own knowledge and to transmit that new information to their students in context.

If you would like a copy of the Indian Law teaching materials, contact the Institute for Law School Teaching at P.O. Box 3528, Spokane, WA, 99220-3528, telephone (509) 328-4220 (ext. 3740).