Native American Law: Scholarly Legal Articles

Tool to find published legal articles: LegalTrac

• Access LegalTrac on campus, in BLS housing, and elsewhere off campus if one has implemented the BLS proxy server instructions.

LegalTrac's Topic Finder

• Enter a search term, for example: Native Americans Northeast.  Then, choose the Tiles view or topic Wheel view to narrow search results to documents containing an additional subject or term.

LegalTrac's Subject Guide Search

• LegalTrac's subjects include: Federal tribal law, First Nations Peoples, Indigenous peoples, Native Americans, Native American children, Native American culture, Native American history, Native American land cessions, Native American land tenure, Native American rights, Native American rights activists, Native American women, Native American youth, Native North Americans, Native South Americans and Tribal sovereignty. 
• Click a subject like: Native Americans to view citations to articles or click a subdivision (example: Laws, regulations and rules).  LegalTrac also provides links to related subjects.

Index to Foreign Legal Periodicals (IFLP)

• Access IFLP on campus, in BLS housing, and elsewhere off campus if one has implemented the BLS proxy server instructions.

IFLP provides English-language indexing of articles published in other countries' legal journals.

• Useful options included in IFLP's search pull-down menu are: Country of Publication and Subject/Country Heading.
• IFLP's subjects include: Indigenous peoples and Legal history.
• BLS researchers might need to request legal articles cited in IFLP through the ILL (interlibrary loan) tab in SARA catalog.

Alaska Law Review @ Duke Law

• This journal states it "examines legal issues affecting the state of Alaska."
• Its "Year in Review" blog includes topic: Native Law.

American Indian Law Journal @ Seattle University School of Law

• This journal states it "is a co-curricular journal at Seattle University School of Law that is dedicated to the development of Indian law education and advocacy."

American Indian Law Review @ University of Oklahoma College of Law

• This journal states it "serves as a nationwide scholarly forum for analysis of developments in legal issues pertaining to Native Americans and indigenous peoples worldwide."

Indigenous Peoples’ Journal of Law, Culture & Resistance (current issue + additional issues) @ UCLA School of Law

• This journal states: "We promote Native scholarship, both student and faculty, and support Native scholars and voices. We partner with Native communities to publish writings that will bring attention to their specific situations and legal battles."
• Note: UCLA American Indian Studies Center also publishes the open access periodical: American Indian Culture and Research Journal.

Tribal Law Journal @ University of New Mexico School of Law

• This journal states it "provides native peoples, practitioners, and law students an opportunity to contribute their work to the discussion relating to internal indigenous law. Contributions include, but are not limited to, tribal court case comments, reflections on tribal systems, the development of tribal law, the value of tribal law, interviews, and teachings."
• Tribal Law Journal held a Nov. 9, 2023 Symposium: 200 Years Since Johnson v. M'Intosh: The Case’s Impact on Native Communities and Tribal Governments.  Articles in v. 23, issue 1 of Tribal Law Journal focus on the impact of Johnson v. M'Intosh.

See also:

World Legal Information Institute: Categories: Law Journals > Subjects: Indigenous Law

Publicly Accessible Repositories that Include Preprints:

bepress Legal Repository 

• Includes legal working papers and unpublished/recently published legal articles. 
• Use Advanced Search to find articles by subject, keywords in abstract, author and title. 
  • bepress uses subject: Indigenous, Indian, and Aboriginal Law     

Law Commons 

• Is an open access repository of scholarly articles and other research.  BrooklynWorks (Brooklyn Law School's scholarly repository) is part of this network. From the main page of Law Commons, view articles grouped by sub-discipline.
  • Law Commons groups articles and other research under sub-discipline: Indigenous, Indian and Aboriginal Law Commons

SSRN (might require registration to access an article--registration is free)

• Includes legal working papers, unpublished/recently published legal articles, and even pre-prints of some book chapters.
  • SSRN uses keywords: Native American Law          

Sources of published articles:

Google Scholar, bullet: Articles

• If a BLS researcher does not plan to work on campus or in BLS housing: Before searching, implement the BLS proxy server instructions.  Then, the BLS researcher will be able to access more full-text articles in Google Scholar search results.

HeinOnline's Indigenous Peoples of the Americas: History, Culture & Law includes subcollection: Scholarly Articles (PDFs) (subscription, BLS Library)

• Hein employee Lauren Zazzara wrote: "More than 25 serial titles reside within this subcollection, including the entire span of the Indian Law Reporter, which ran from 1974 to 2013."  
• Access this subscription HeinOnline database on campus, in BLS housing, and elsewhere off campus if one has implemented the BLS proxy server instructions.

​HeinOnline's Law Journal Library and Foreign and International Law Resources Database provide PDFs. (subscription, BLS Library)

• HeInOnline provides published legal articles (articles published in journals and in yearbooks).
• Access these subscription HeinOnline databases on campus, in BLS housing, and elsewhere off campus if one has implemented the BLS proxy server instructions.

Lexis+ tab: International includes: Canada > All Canada Law Reviews and Journals

• Click link above and enter Lexis+ user name and password.

Westlaw's Law Reviews & Journals and Canada Journals (which includes Indigenous Law Journal)

• Click one of the links above and enter Westlaw user name and password.

See also this research guide:

• AALL FCIL-SIS Mexico Law and Legal Research Guide (2014) includes section: Law Reviews (p. 56-)