Twenty-five years after the Native American Rights Fund helped create the Tribal Supreme Court Project, the initiative is credited with changing how tribal interests approach Supreme Court litigation. It emerged from a 2001 Washington meeting of tribal leaders, NARF and National Congress of American Indians representatives, and appellate lawyers. At the time, scholarship by Indian law scholar David Getches showed tribal interests were less likely to prevail before the justices than convicted criminals. That same year, tribal interests lost five of six cases, with four unanimous losses.
The project’s signature approach became visible in cases like Plains Commerce Bank v. Long Family Land and Cattle Co., an early 5-4 loss on tribal jurisdiction. There, the project organized a layered amicus strategy: the affected tribal nation detailed its own history and court system, NCAI added national policy context, and a consortium of tribes explained the federal statutory framework. A United States brief in support of tribal jurisdiction, secured with help from project allies, also put the court on notice that a ruling against tribal interests would contradict federal policy.
By 2014 and after, the strategy matured into a series of decisions favoring tribal interests that surprised longtime Indian law observers. The source notes that the project remains imperfect, and the structural disadvantages rooted in colonial-era precedent have not disappeared. It also acknowledges a tradeoff: because the project prioritizes Supreme Court specialists, Indigenous advocates who had argued tribal cases since the early 1980s have sometimes been sidelined.