Inclusive Curriculum

This article views discrimination against indigenous peoples in home mortgage lending programs through the lens of Conflict of Laws. The complicated scheme of property interests in "Indian Country," which is directly tied to the federal trust resposibility and government-to-government relationship with sovereign tribal nations, is one root cause of how indigenous people face discrimination in contrast to other Americans, particularly white Americans. This paper seeks to outline the obstacles for lenders, borrowers, regulators, and tribal governments; to present the solutions implemented through public-private partnerships and independently by tribal governments to work around these obstacles.

This article examines the manner in which American courts resolved the choice of law questions that frequently arose in the adjudication of disputes concerning slaves. Although in the early colonial period all of the colonies recognized slavery as an institution and enacted laws to sanction it, by the time the Constitution was adopted, there were already opposing sectional attitudes toward slavery, and the legal status of slavery in the North and in the South differed considerably. Commercial relations between the sections made it inevitable that disputes would arise concerning which state's law should apply to determine the status of a particular slave.

This article explores the conflict of laws (failure to extend the full Bill of Rights to Citizens in American "territories") in Territorial Incorporation Doctrine. In the colonies, there are substantial numbers of civilians who are not under the power of another sovereign. In the colonies, there are United States courts, United States prosecutors, United States judges, and United States interests at stake. Yet the Supreme Court, through the TID, has unjustifiably exempted portions of the Bill of Rights from application in the territories.

This article takes a contemporary look at the Territorial Incorporation Doctrine and its effects on American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The article argues that US territories remain bound to their essentially colonial status. Congress continues to legislate in ways that subject, disadvantage, or quite frankly forget the U.S. territories.