Date Thesis Awarded
4-2019
Access Type
Honors Thesis -- Access Restricted On-Campus Only
Degree Name
Bachelors of Arts (BA)
Department
Government
Advisor
Jaime Settle
Committee Members
Christine Nemacheck
Alexandra Joosse
Abstract
Indigenous tribes, states, and foreign sovereigns possess different degrees of sovereignty outside the federal government yet frequently interact within the United States’ judicial system. In their presence in the Supreme Court, do indigenous tribes behave more like foreign sovereigns or more like states? I explore how each actor behaves as a submitter of amicus curiae briefs in order to compare the macro-level behavior of tribes, sovereigns, and states. I analyze the amicus brief submissions of these actors to all merits cases throughout the Roberts Court. My dataset is unique in the attention paid to the network of signees and entities involved in each amicus brief: I record all entities co-signing on to a single brief and compare the patterns within and between the entities in how frequently they file, to which party they file for, and with whom entities co-file. Through analyzing my dataset of briefs and beginning to evaluate the network compilation of signees, I demonstrate that tribes’ behavior as amicus submitters lies in between that of states and foreign sovereigns, mirroring the state of their semi-sovereignty in the eyes of the Supreme Court.
Recommended Citation
Murray, Grace, "Comparing the Behavior of Indigenous Tribes, States, and Foreign Sovereigns as Submitters of Amicus Curiae within the Supreme Court" (2019). Undergraduate Honors Theses. William & Mary. Paper 1318.
https://scholarworks.wm.edu/honorstheses/1318
