READING AMERICAN INDIAN LAW.

• Author: Roemer, Neoshia R.

Given the importance of nearly 200 years of federal Indian law, the Indian law scholarship that has helped frame modern thinking on the practice area deserves examination. Yet, as the editors of Reading American Indian Law: Foundational Principles (1) highlight, it is easy to overlook the Indian law scholarship that now permeates our classrooms, court opinions, and conversations. The editors of Reading American Indian Law bring us back to a somewhat foundational issue: Indian law as we know it today exists because of the impactful scholarly contributions of people like David Getches, Philip Frickey, Matthew L. M. Fletcher, Kristen Carpenter, Bethany Berger, Angela Riley, Robert Williams, and more. As the editors point out, this body of legal scholarship helps "to contextualize the changing doctrines announced by the Court, reconcile contradictory authority, challenge assumptions of race/place/power, and push for courts, tribal leaders, legislators, lawyer, educators, and students to adopt new ways of thinking about our fundamental doctrine." (2) As the editors of the compilation note, so much attention has been paid to case law that we have rarely compiled and studied the impact of the scholars--those who make the field what it is. (3)

The push and pull between primary and secondary resources in law presents a particularly interesting question: How do we know what we know? If you are an attorney arguing a case before the U.S. Supreme Court or arguing in the Idaho Supreme Court, precedent from the highest court in your jurisdiction is your authority. But crafting one's argument can take several different approaches. Obviously, it would be malpractice for an attorney to not engage any on-point case law, either for or against their proposition. Yet, if a question was thoroughly answered, the practitioner would not be before an appellate court. Beyond understanding the black letter law and precedent, the appellate practitioner understands the value of legal scholarship. After all, legal scholarship, produced by law professors, law students, and practitioners alike, can influence the types of arguments attorneys make. Indeed, legal scholarship can even help jurists arrive at their opinions.

However, so much of our work in both legal practice and academia focuses on what the courts say. After all, that is a very important piece of the puzzle in a legal system that is built upon stare decisis. (4) Stare decisis, or the principle "to stand by...