Works-in-Progress Seminar with Professor Alexandra Fay

Procedural Hegemony: Adaptation, Assimilation and Legitimacy in the History of Tribal Courts with Assistant Professor of Law (The University of Tulsa), Alexandra Fay. 

This legal history project studies the imposition of Anglo-American legal procedure on tribal justice systems. It considers procedural assimilation as a product of both American imperialism and tribal self-preservation through strategic accommodation. The project is informed by a prior archival study on the Courts of Indian Offenses, as well as the Five Tribes’ written constitutions that predate those institutions. It considers historic forms of tribal legal adaptation alongside contemporary examples of strategic accommodation, namely the procedural compromises adopted by tribes implementing enhanced criminal jurisdiction under the Tribal Law and Order Act and the Violence Against Women Act. The project explores the functions of legitimacy and legibility in our colonial legal order.