Wampum

It's the (not so) little things which matter

Proof that I should make sure I read beyond an article's title.

Last Friday, this headline made me so depressed, I decided not to read farther:

Contempt Ruling Against Norton Reversed

D.C. Circuit Says Sanction on Interior Chief Not Warranted in Indian Trust Fund Case

For anyone not living under a rock, or just uninterested in all-things-Indian, this U.S. Court of Appeals decision reversed the highest criticism U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth, who has overseen the now famous Cobell v. Norton. i.e., Indian Trust Fund Case, could lay at the feet of the Secretary of the Interior, ostensibly for her utter mishandling of a case she inherited from more than a generation of previous Interior Departments. Norton was not alone in the contempt charges: Clinton DOI Secretaries had also been so cited, but the charges against Norton where particularly damning, as her department not only neglected to address the issues, they apparently actively attempted to thwart any and all means to properly and fairly remediate past sins.

So, after seeing that headline, and checking with my partner (the TribalLaw list owner) that it was in fact true, I mentally filed in my "to be read later, when less susceptible to depression" inbox. Well, I finally got around to that cubbyhole today.

I was more than surprised to learn that while Norton was relieved of her official charge of contempt, the appeals court let stand the bulk of the decisions against the Secretary:

But the court left untouched the substance of Lamberth's 285-page ruling from September 2002 -- and the bulk of the Native Americans' strongest arguments about the Interior Department's continued failure to properly account for the Indians' money, from the 19th century through the beginning of the 21st.

The panel did not reverse Lamberth's ruling that Norton and her fellow officials have given misleading information about the trust fund accounting, and that they were "unfit" to zealously look out for the Indian trust fund because they had competing political and budgetary agendas. The court also refused to grant the government's request that they find Lamberth had overstepped his authority in trying to appoint an independent monitor to look after the trust.

The three judge panel, made up of (surprise, surprise) Republican appointees, used a circuitous argument that Norton could only be charged with criminal contempt, and that the charges against her did not warrant such a serious crime. Thus, though the dismissal was a symbolic defeat for the plaintiffs, the core of their argument against the Interior Department still stands, and will be decided by Judge Lamberth later this year.

Bush has attempted to appoint his chief counsel Miguel Estrada to this appeals court.

Such appointments matter.

[Post-publication edit: Little words like "not" matter too, particularly when unintentionally left out.]

Posted by MB at July 21, 2003 08:13 PM | TrackBack