Navigating Tribal Law Research - Washington State Bar News

A short guide for Washington Attorneys

COLUMN> Write to Counsel

BY AMANDA K. STEPHEN

In law school, you probably learned how to find both state and federal law in your legal research and writing classes. But did you know that there is an important third source of law? It’s Tribal law. (And, yes, you should capitalize “Tribal.”¹)

Since time immemorial, Tribes have “engaged in dispute resolution and the effectuation of [T]ribal justice.”² But modern-day Tribal law refers to the law set out by each of the more than 570 federally recognized and self-governed Tribal Nations in the United States.³ The U.S. Constitution recognizes the inherent sovereignty of Tribal Nations: They have the power to establish their own forms of government, enact legislation, and establish law enforcement and court systems.⁴ There is great variety in the ways Tribal Nations do this. So, this discussion of Tribal courts and Tribal law “cannot adequately account for the complete range of experiences of all tribal nations and courts.”⁵

But if we focus on Tribal law for the 29 federally recognized Tribal governments within Washington,⁶ the discussion is more manageable. This article is a primer to help you do Tribal law research within Washington, something that most legal professionals, regardless of practice area, should know how to do.

Even attorneys who do not practice within Tribal courts can encounter Tribal law when advising clients on issues like land use, environmental regulation, business matters, criminal law, or family law matters. For example, you might represent a client in a divorce who is not a Tribal member but is married to a Tribal member and owns a house financed with money from a Tribal program.⁷ Or you might represent an insurance company that is sued for breach of contract by a Tribe in Tribal court instead of Washington state court.⁸

Tribal Law Versus Federal Indian Law

To begin, I want to distinguish federal Indian law from Tribal law. Federal Indian law examines the relationship between the United States and Tribal Nations through treaties, the United States Constitution, and the jurisdiction of federal, state, and Tribal authorities. In contrast, Tribal law is the specific body of law enacted and enforced by each Tribal Nation “to adjudicate disputes for the welfare of the [T]ribe, its people, and its lands. This authority is inherent and has existed since time immemorial.”⁹ And it encompasses the various types of legal authority that Tribes use, such as constitutions, codes, regulations, and/or common law. Federal Indian law is often easy to find as it is embedded within our federal law jurisprudence, but Tribal law is not.

Importance of Tribal Law

Understanding what Tribal law is and where you can find it is important because it is “an integral part of the American legal landscape[.]”¹⁰ But there are also more tangible benefits to such knowledge. Practitioners who understand Tribal law can better serve Tribal communities, provide more thoughtful research and advice on Tribal law issues, and better “contribute to the broader legal discourse surrounding Native American rights and interests.”¹¹ They can also “effectively address legal issues in Indian Country and contribute to a more inclusive legal system.”¹² Finally, “given that [T]ribes interact extensively with federal and state governments, businesses, and individuals[,]” knowledge of Tribal law may even make an attorney more marketable.¹³

Where to Find Tribal Law Resources

I want to acknowledge that researching Tribal law can be challenging, plain and simple. If you are used to being able to do all of your legal research on Westlaw or Lexis, you will want to give yourself more patience for a Tribal law issue. Because they are not comprehensively published in traditional print reporters or online databases (or at all!), Tribal law primary authorities are harder to find.¹⁴ To help minimize your frustration, I suggest you start your research in one of two sources: the Tribe itself or the University of Washington School of Law’s Gallagher Law Library Indian & Tribal Law Research Guide.

Accessing Tribal Law Through Tribes

According to Brenda Williams, University of Washington School of Law teaching professor and co-director of the Tribal Court Public Defense Clinic, the best source for Tribal law is usually the Tribe itself. She tells her students to always start their research with a Tribe’s government webpage, which can often be found using a simple search engine like Google.

For example, if you needed to look up the Tulalip Tribes’ codes, you might search for “Tulalip Tribal Code” in Google. The first link from a government webpage is for the Tulalip Tribes’ Legal Reservation Attorney.¹⁵ From that page, you can access the Tulalip Tribal Codes, which the Tulalip Tribes have made available on Code Publishing.¹⁶

If you are used to being able to do all of your legal research on Westlaw or Lexis, you will want to give yourself more patience for a Tribal law issue.

As an aside, Code Publishing also hosts Tribal codes for a number of other Tribes in Washington, including the Confederated Tribes of the Chehalis Reservation, the Cowlitz Indian Tribe, the Muckleshoot Indian Tribe, the Puyallup Tribe of Indians, and the Samish Indian Nation.¹⁷ If you regularly advise clients on matters of Tribal law for one of these Tribes, Code Publishing makes it easy to get notifications about updates to these published codes.

If you cannot find the information you are looking for on a Tribal court’s website, the best thing to do is contact the Tribe or the clerk of the Tribal court directly. Many Tribes do not publish sources of Tribal law on their websites and some Tribal Nations may even require an in-person visit to the Tribal court to access certain materials.

Indian & Tribal Law Research Guide

If you are looking for a broader source for Tribal law material, the University of Washington School of Law’s Gallagher Law Library has a helpful research guide that covers Tribal law.¹⁸

As any good legal research professor would tell you, starting with a secondary source can be a helpful way to begin a legal research project. And Tribal law is no different. The research guide suggests several secondary sources.¹⁹

For a good and fairly recent overview of Tribal law, see American Indian Tribal Law (3d ed.) by Matthew L. M. Fletcher,²⁰ published in 2024. Angelique EagleWoman and Stacy Leeds’s new 2025 book Mastering Native American Law also provides practical information about Tribal government, jurisdiction, and regulation, as well as family law in Tribal communities.²¹

Other books focus on more specific aspects of Tribal law such as criminal law and procedure, Tribal constitutions, and labor and employment law.²² Additionally, if you have access to Westlaw, LexisNexis, or Hein-
Online, you can explore the American Law Institute’s Restatement of the Law – The Law of American Indians, which has chapters on Tribal Authority, Tribal Economic Development, Indian Country Criminal Jurisdiction, and Natural Resources.

Or, you may find helpful articles in one of several journals dedicated to Tribal law, such as the American Indian Law Journal from Seattle University, the American Indian Law Review from the University of Oklahoma, or the Tribal Law Journal from the University of New Mexico.²³ Finally, the Native Nations Institute at the University of Arizona has a searchable database of videos, audio recordings, papers, and research on Tribal constitutions and constitutional reform.²⁴

When you are ready to start looking at primary authority, the research guide provides a few places to start. For example, if you are looking for judicial opinions, the Northwest Intertribal Court System uses Code Publishing to publish opinions from a consortium of 15 Tribes in Washington.²⁵ Sometimes, even if there is not published case law for the Tribe you are interested in, you may be able to find persuasive authority from other Tribal court jurisdictions on a particular issue. Fastcase, LexisNexis, and Westlaw also have databases with access to Tribal court opinions from across the United States, but the research guide warns that
“[c]overage is spotty for each source. A source that has cases for a given [T]ribe from, say, 1990 might not have them for 2015.”²⁶

For the 29 federally recognized Tribes within Washington state, the research guide includes links to each Tribe’s website and also notes third-party sources where you can find primary law, such as the Tribe’s constitution, codes, and cases, if available.²⁷ The research guide does a nice job noting the limitations of the third-party sources, but it’s worth another warning: Third-party websites can simply be “snapshots in time” and include outdated versions of the law. So, just as you might go to the Washington State Legislature’s website to find the current version of a Washington statute, the best place to find current Tribal law is probably the Tribe’s government website.

Tribal law is a varied and important source of law that you can and should be ready to navigate.

There is one last consideration. Not every Tribe has a Tribal court system, and not all Tribes have the same kinds of primary law, so that may affect what you are able to find. For example, the Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation have a criminal court, a civil court, a juvenile court, and a dependency court.²⁸ But the Yakama Nation is a Treaty Nation, so it is not organized under a constitution, and the Yakama Tribal Courts’ opinions are not available to the public. The Yakama Nation does have a code, the Revised Yakama Code (RYC), but to access the RYC, you must contact the Yakama Nation Justice Services Administrator.²⁹ Although the research guide provides a link to the National Indian Law Library for the “Yakama Nation – Tribal Codes and Resolutions – Table of Contents” from October 2009, that resource literally only includes the table of contents for the October 2009 version of the RYC.³⁰

Why Didn’t I Learn About This in Law School?

Several factors may explain why you did not learn about Tribal courts or Tribal law in law school. Law professors may avoid teaching Tribal law because they know little to nothing about it themselves, don’t feel like they have enough time to teach it in an already packed curriculum, or find the number of Tribal court systems and unavailability of primary legal authorities overwhelming.³¹ They may also assume that Tribal law is a niche practice area that students do not generally need to learn, which, as noted above, is an improper assumption given the many ways Tribal law can interact with other state and federal legal issues practicing attorneys might face.

But bias is likely another factor. Racist language and stereotypes about Tribes and Tribal members are abundant in older United States Supreme Court cases, and those cases continue to be cited as good law in the Court’s current cases.³² The presence of these influences in our jurisprudence have perpetuated a sense that Tribes and Tribal courts are inferior.³³ As Keith Richotte Jr. explains, “the innovative work that many [T]ribal courts are engaged in is not always recognized and appreciated outside of Indian Country” and the resulting “trepidation about [T]ribal courts … is often founded by the same presumptions about [T]ribal peoples that existed in the nineteenth century and was expressed in the Indian law cases of that era.”³⁴

Where Can I Learn More About Tribal Law?

Aside from the resources described in this article, the WSBA has 10 on-demand seminars in the CLE Store that touch on topics related to Tribal law, such as Tribal court admissions and practice, criminal law, family law, cultural respect, and environmental law. In addition, the University of Washington’s Native American Law Center has resources for practitioners³⁵ and hosts an annual Indian Law Symposium every September, and Seattle University School of Law’s Center for Indian Law and Policy also has a robust list of resources for practitioners.³⁶

In conclusion, Tribal law is a varied and important source of law that you can and should be ready to navigate. Although researching Tribal law can be challenging and complex, I encourage you to check out the Gallagher Law Library’s Indian & Tribal Law Research Guide and fulfill some of your CLE requirements this year with Tribal law seminars. Who knows: You may find just the information you need to better advise a client on an issue related to Tribal law—or uncover a new area of practice that sparks your passion, deepens your expertise, and opens new opportunities for service and professional growth.

ASK US > If you have a question about legal writing that you’d like to see addressed in a future “Write to Counsel” column by UW Law writing faculty, please submit it to wabarnews@wsba.org, with the subject line “Write to Counsel.”

About the author

Amanda K. Stephen is an assistant teaching professor at the University of Washington School of Law and co-author of The Legal Writing Handbook: Analysis, Research, and Writing (9^th ed.).

NOTES

1. See Angelique EagleWoman, “The Capitalization of ‘Tribal Nations’ and the Decolonization of Citation, Nomenclature, and Terminology in the United States,” 49 Mitchell Hamline L. Rev. 623, 628 (2023) (calling for common style guides to require the terms “Tribal Nations,” “Tribes,” and “Tribal,” “when preceding an entity or noun connected to a Tribal government, … be capitalized”).

2. Keith Richotte Jr., “The Third Branch of the Third Sovereign: A Brief History of Tribal Courts and Their Perception in the Supreme Court,” 49 Court Review: The Journal of the American Judges Association 6, 6 (2013).

3. EagleWoman, supra note 1, at 635.

4. Laurel Currie Oats, et al., The Legal Writing Handbook: Analysis, Research, and Writing 28 (9th ed. 2025).

5. Richotte, supra note 2, at 6.

6. Washington Tribes, The Tribes of Washington, http://www.washingtontribes.org/the-tribes-of-washington/ (last visited Apr. 1, 2025). There are three additional federally recognized Tribes outside of the state with reserved treaty rights within the state that are not covered by this article: the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Reservation, the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs Reservation of Oregon, and the Nez Perce Tribe. See Governor’s Office of Indian Affairs, Accord between the Federally Recognized Indian Tribes With Treaty Reserved Rights in Wash. State and The State of Wash., https://goia.wa.gov/sites/default/files/public/gov-to-gov/OutOfStateAccord.pdf?5p (last visited Apr. 1, 2025).

7. Turpen v. Turpen, 20 NICS App. 1 (2022).

8. Port Gamble S’Klallam v. Lexington Ins., et al., 19 NICS App. 12 (2021).

9. Amber Kennedy Madole, Bonnie Shucha & Rebeca Plevel, “Integrating Tribal Law into the Legal Research and Writing Curriculum: Benefits, Challenges, and Strategies,” 31 Persps. 4, 5 (2024), https://legal.thomsonreuters.com/content/dam/ewp-m/documents/legal/en/pdf/other/perspectives/2024/west-persp-v3111-fpgsout.pdf.

10. Id. at 4.

11. Id.

12. Id.

13. Id.

14. Id. at 6 (citing Bonnie J. Shucha, “‘Whatever Tribal Precedent There May Be’: The (Un) Availability of Tribal Law,” 106 L. Libr. J. 199, 199-200 (2014)).

15. The Tulalip Tribes of Washington Office of Reservation Attorney, www.tulaliptribes-nsn.gov/Dept/LegalReservationAttorney (last visited Mar. 27, 2025).

16. Id.; see Tulalip Tribal Codes, www.codepublishing.com/WA/Tulalip/ (last visited Mar. 27, 2025).

17. To find the code for one of these Tribes, search for it at General Code, Code Library, www.generalcode.com/library/ (last visited Mar. 27, 2025).

18. Gallagher Law Library, Indian & Tribal Law, Home (Introductory Materials), https://lib.law.uw.edu/c.php?g=1239321&p=9069745 (last visited Mar. 27, 2025). Mary Whisner, now librarian emeritus, created the research guide, and it is maintained by librarians and interns.

19. Gallagher Law Library, Indian & Tribal Law, Tribal Law, Secondary Sources, https://lib.law.uw.edu/c.php?g=1239321&p=9069746 (last visited Mar. 27, 2005).

20. Matthew L. M. Fletcher, American Indian Tribal Law (3d ed. 2024).

21. Angelique W. EagleWoman & Stacy L. Leeds, Mastering Native American Law (2024).

22. Carrie E. Garrow & Sarah Deer, Tribal Criminal Law and Procedure (2d ed. 2015); Andrew Novak, Criminal Convictions in U.S. Tribal Law: Collateral Consequences, Pardons, and Expungements in Indian Country (2025); Melissa L. Tatum, Structuring Sovereignty: Constitutions of Native Nations (2014); Kaighn Smith Jr. & Richard Guest, Labor and Employment Law in Indian Country (2011).

23. Seattle Univ. School of Law, American Indian Law Journal Home, https://digitalcommons.law.seattleu.edu/ailj/ (last visited Mar. 27, 2025); The Univ. of Okla. College of Law, American Indian Law Review, https://digitalcommons.law.ou.edu/ailr/ (last visited Mar. 27, 2025); The Univ. of N.M. School of Law, Tribal Law Journal, https://lawschool.unm.edu/tlj/index.html (last visited Mar. 27, 2025).

24. Univ. of Ariz. Native Nations Institute, Indigenous Governance Database, https://nnigovernance.arizona.edu/ (last visited Mar. 27, 2025).

25. Northwest Intertribal Court System, Tribal Court Appellate Opinions, www.codepublishing.com/WA/NICS/ (last visited Mar. 27, 2025).

26. Univ. of Wash. Gallagher Law Library, Indian & Tribal Law, Tribal Law, Tribal Court Decisions, https://lib.law.uw.edu/c.php?g=1239321&p=9069749#s-lg-box-28749983 (last visited Mar. 27, 2025).

27. Univ. of Wash. Gallagher Law Library, Indian & Tribal Law, Tribal Law, Washington Tribes’ Codes & Constitutions, https://lib.law.uw.edu/c.php?g=1239321&p=9069750 (last visited Mar. 27, 2025).

28. Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation, Our Programs & Services, www.yakama.com/programs/ (last visited Mar. 27, 2025); Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation, Yakama Tribal Court, https://yakama.com/programs/tribal-court/ (last visited Mar. 27, 2025).

29. Special thanks to Anthony Aronica, senior attorney for the Yakama Nation Office of Legal Counsel and UW Law graduate, for his guidance on how to find Yakama Nation Tribal law.

30. National Indian Law Library, Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation – Tribal Codes and Resolutions, www.narf.org/nill/codes/confederatedyakama/index.html (last visited Mar. 27, 2025).

31. Madole, supra note 9, at 5-7.

32. Adam Crepelle, “Lies, Damn Lies, and Federal Indian Law: The Ethics of Citing Racist Precedent in Contemporary Federal Indian Law,” 44 N.Y.U. Rev. L. & Soc. Change 529 (2021) (breaking down several examples of federal Indian law cases that are based “in impermissible racial stereotypes” but “remain[] binding law”).

33. Richotte, supra note 2, at 9, 11-12.

34. Id. at 6.

35. Univ. of Wash. School of Law Native American Law Center, Resources, www.law.uw.edu/academics/programs/native-american-law-center/resources (last visited Mar. 27, 2025).

36. Seattle Univ. School of Law Center for Indian Law and Policy, Resources, https://law.seattleu.edu/centers-and-institutes/center-for-indian-law-and-policy/community-work/resources/ (last visited Mar. 27, 2025).