Civil Jurisdiction: The Boundaries between Federal and Tribal Courts

A well-developed body of law, rooted in the U.S. Constitution, governs the relationship between federal and state courts. Tribal courts, however, are not subject to the U.S. Constitution, and that body of law does not help establish the relationship between federal and tribal courts. In the landmark cases of National Farmers Union and Iowa Mutual, the U.S. Supreme Court declared the scope of tribal jurisdiction was a federal question, but that litigants seeking to challenge the jurisdiction of tribal courts must first exhaust their tribal remedies. This article, published in the Arizona State Law Journal under my prior name (Koehn), explores the exhaustion requirement and its implementation.