Keywords
Supreme Court, trust, breach-of-trust, water, water law, Indian, tribe
Abstract
Abstract: The United States holds hundreds of millions of dollars of assets in trust for federal Indian tribes. Tribes have always had the power to bring suit when the United States mismanages those assets. Historically, tribes have identified either pervasive federal control of those assets or a specific “rights-creating or duty-imposing” textual provision as the cause of action for their breach-of-trust claims. Further, tribes have invoked either the Tucker Act or the Administrative Procedure Act as their waiver of sovereign immunity. This Note provides an empirical look at how the lines of cases under the Tucker Act and the Administrative Procedure Act have merged and diverged over time. In Arizona v. Navajo Nation, the Supreme Court merged the case lines forever, holding that pervasive federal control of tribal assets no longer consistutes a valid cause of action for a breach-of-trust claim. Given the relatively common belief among lower courts that pervasive federal control was sufficient to constitute a cause of action for breach-of-trust claims, this decision will have major impacts on tribes’ ability to control their own assets.
Recommended Citation
Kegan Peters,
Arizona v. Navajo Nation: How the Supreme Court Decision Will Change the Trust Relationship,
35 Fordham Envtl. L. Rev.
(2024).
Available at: https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/elr/vol35/iss1/2
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