Sanctioning a Tyranny: The Diminishment of Ex parte Young, Expansion of Hans Immunity, and Denial of Indian Rights in Coeur d'Alene Tribe

Authors

John P. LaVelle, University of New Mexico - School of LawFollow

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

Fall 1999

Abstract

This Article analyzes a recent decision of the Supreme Court that illustrates the enormous destructive power of the Rehnquist Court's peculiar brand of anti-tribal activism, Idaho v. Coeur d'Alene Tribe. Coeur d'Alene Tribe is likely to heighten the urgency with which Eleventh Amendment scholars have called for an overruling of Hans to ameliorate the damage that Hans and its progeny already have done to the regime of federally protected rights under the Constitution, laws and treaties of the United States-a regime at the core of the Framers' vision of paramount federal law and essential to securing true liberty for all Americans in a constitutional democracy. Coeur d'Alene Tribe should serve as a sobering reminder of the dire implications for constitutional democracy that necessarily arise whenever Indian Tribes are made to suffer a great injustice at the hands of the United States legal system.

Volume

31

Issue

3

First Page

787

Last Page

944

Recommended Citation

John P. LaVelle, Sanctioning a Tyranny: The Diminishment of Ex parte Young, Expansion of Hans Immunity, and Denial of Indian Rights in Coeur d'Alene Tribe, 31 787 (1999).
Available at: https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/law_facultyscholarship/570