Cobell v. Norton’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

1 federal appellate · 2 district ·

Most-quoted passages

The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 3 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “At times, it seems that the parties, particularly Interior, lose sight of what this case is really about. The case is nearly a decade old, the docket sheet contains over 3000 entries, and the issues are such that the parties are engaged in perpetual, heated litigation on several fronts simultaneously. But when one strips away the convoluted statutes, the technical legal complexities, the elaborate collateral proceedings, and the layers upon layers of interrelated orders and opinions from this Court and the Court of Appeals, what remains is the raw, shocking, humiliating truth at the bottom: After all these years, our government still treats Native American Indians as if they were somehow less than deserving of the respect that should be afforded to everyone in a society where all people are supposed to be equal. For those harboring hope that the stories of murder, dispossession, forced marches, assimilationist policy programs, and other incidents of cultural genocide against the Indians are merely the echoes of a horrible, bigoted government-past that has been sanitized by the good deeds of more recent history, this case serves as an appalling reminder of the evils that result when large numbers of the politically powerless are placed at the mercy of institutions engendered and controlled by a politically powerful few. It reminds us that even today our great democratic enterprise remains unfinished. And it reminds us, finally, that the terrible power of government, and the fr”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Cobell v. Kempthorne

2. “While it is undeniable that Interior has failed as a Trustee-Delegate, it is nevertheless difficult to conjure plausible hypotheses to explain Interior’s default. Perhaps Interior’s past and present leaders have been evil people, deriving their pleasure from inflicting harm on society’s most vulnerable. Interior may be consistently populated with apathetic people who just cannot muster the necessary energy or emotion to avoid complicity in the Department’s grossly negligent administration of the Indian trust. Or maybe Interi- or’s officials are cowardly people who dodge their responsibilities out of a childish fear of the magnitude of effort involved in reforming a degenerate system. Perhaps Interior as an institution is so badly broken that even the most well-intentioned initiatives are polluted and warped by the processes of implementation. 15 The government as a whole may be inherently incapable of serving as an adequate fiduciary because of some structural flaw. Perhaps the Indians were doomed the moment the first European set foot on American soil. Who can say? It may be that the opacity of the cause renders the Indian trust problem insoluble. On numerous occasions over the last nine years, the Court has wanted to simply wash its hands of Interior and its iniquities once and for all. The plaintiffs have invited the Court to declare that Interior has repudiated the Indian trust, appoint a receiver to liquidate the trust assets, and finally relieve the Indians of the heavy”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Cobell v. Kempthorne

3. “Interior does not dispute the factual predicates of the plaintiffs’ argument. Interior concedes that all trust-related information Interior communicates to Indian beneficiaries is inherently unreliable. Of course, anything other than a concession of this point would be laughable in light of the record in this case. The factual record, composed of the accumulated detritus of nine years spent examining Interior’s odious performance as Trustee-Delegate for the Indian trust, is certainly clear enough and smattered with a sufficient number of specific abuses to satisfy the ... standard for relief under Rule 23(d). If Interior cannot even ascertain the number of existing IIM account holders, how can any of its more complicated calculations, such as land appraisals, be trusted? If Interior is willing to deceive this Court, why would anyone think that Interior would hesitate to lie to the Indians?”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Cobell v. Kempthorne