Law and disorder on the reservation
At Harvard Law School (HLS) Nov. 8 for the first day of a two-day conference titled “Tribal Courts and the Federal System,” Troy Eid, chairman of the Indian Law and Order Commission (ILOC) started his talk with a quiz. The share of all juveniles in federal detention that are Native American, answered by a student from Tufts: two-thirds. True: Most Native American juveniles are transferred to federal custody, even when tribes want to charge them locally, due to the Major Crimes Act of 1885 and the Juvenile Justice Act of 1938. “[This] has been treated as if it cannot change, like the tablets of Moses,” said Eid, whose commission, established by the Tribal Law and Order Act of 2010, has spent the past year interviewing members of more than half of the federally recognized tribes in the country in preparation for a report to be delivered to the president and Congress. How many Native...