As scholars, advocates, and citizens from Indigenous societies across the Americas have argued since the beginning of European colonization, “Indigenous sovereignty” consists in the power and right of Indigenous peoples to govern themselves and their relations with other societies on their own terms. In short, Native nations have a right to govern through their own […]
Latest Articles
Rejecting Plurinationalism: Indigenous Peoples and the (Almost) New Constitution in Chile
In Chile, as in most Latin American countries, there is a complex relationship between the government and indigenous peoples. The latest chapter of this tense interchange took place during the referendum on September 4th, 2022, when the Chilean people rejected a new proposed constitution for the country—62% of the votes cast opposed the new governing […]
Elder Brother’s Divided Home: An Indigenous Perspective on US-Mexico Border Relations
According to the Native American Environmental Protection Coalition (NAEPC), there are thirty Indigenous communities straddling the international boundary that divides the United Mexican States (Mexico) and the United States of America (USA). Most of these are on the US side, organized into reservations, which are self-governing under federal law. On the Mexican side, Indigenous communities […]
The Strange Birth (and Stranger Death) of Judicial Restraint
In the spring semester of 1856, a 25-year-old student at Harvard Law named James Bradley Thayer submitted an entry into the school’s annual essay competition. Undoubtedly, he had the cash prize in mind. After all, Thayer did not descend from Boston’s patrician class that dominated Harvard; he had to fund his own education, given his […]
Book Review: Common Good Constitutionalism by Adrian Vermeule
In Common Good Constitutionalism, Harvard law professor Adrian Vermeule seeks to accomplish for the whole of American constitutional law what the landmark Dobbs opinion delivered to the nearly fifty-year abortion regime of Roe v. Wade—a dramatic reversal. Unlike the devoted ranks of the FedSoc crowd, however, Prof. Vermeule is not angling for the triumph of […]
