Torey Dolan

@toreydolan.bsky.social

644 Followers 156 Following

Assistant Professor of Law, University of Wisconsin Law School. Writing about Federal Indian Law/Voting Rights & stuff. Views are my own. Citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma living on Ho Chunk Land📍

Blurry closeup of meowing white kitten that looks like it is screaming.
Steve Buscemi from 30 Rock, dressed like a teenager saying “how do you do” with “fellow kids” changed to “fellow LLC’s”
Photo from “Succession” character Logan Roy saying “you are not serious people.”
A meme that says “I’m not falling for that Atlantic Article. That’s clearly someone with a fetish for getting yelled at. I refuse to participate in that kind of perversion.”
Meme that says “Marked Safe from SCOTUS Voting Rights Act decision today”
Meme of Countess Luann from Real Housewives of New York that says “Um, to get a Justice Alito VRA opinion is very upsetting.”
Gif from the Simpsons where Lisa says to her mother Marge, “All right. No husband.” With a shrug demonstrating indifference to the idea of her being married to a man.
Small tabby cat sitting by the window with the Madison, Wisconsin skyline - including WI capitol building - behind her. She has a pink stuffed axolotl next to her.
Seminole man sitting on a stage with sunglasses, bone choker necklace, and a Seminole chest plate with a Seminole patchwork jacket with the caption “stares in native.”
Photo of Torey Dolan in Choctaw regalia with her mother, a fellow citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma.
Very disheveled and dismayed looking Ben Affleck on a balcony with a beer, a half-smoked cigarette, and a photoshopped “I voted” sticker on his t-shirt.
“We are the first commission that didn’t have preclearance. So our approach to the Voting Rights Act was entirely our interpretation of what that law means,” Erika Neuberg (Chairwoman of the Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission said). “I did not believe that on the congressional level, that it was the right thing to do to continue to have the Native Americans drive the shape of the rest of the map.”
"American Indian Geopolitical Rights" by Torey Dolan. Abstract: American Indian people hold a unique legal position under the United States Constitution and within American law based on Indian status. This unique relationship at times reflects the cultural, spiritual, and legal ties to land that are unique to American Indians and represent aberrations in American law. This fundamentally impacts the lives and interests of American Indians, including in matters of representational democracy. This paper seeks to contextualize the proscriptive legal ties that American Indians have with land under law, termed herein “Indian Geopolitical Rights.” This paper argues that American Indian Geopolitical Rights reflect not only significant cultural interests of American Indians, but that American Indians have substantive rights that are tied to place that impacts how Indians engage with democratic systems and conceive of political representation. As such, the needs of American Indians necessitate a consideration of Indian geopolitical rights in the development, maintenance, and implementation of local, state, and federal electoral systems. This paper argues that Indian geopolitical rights are incumbent upon states, that election law doctrine is currently ill-equipped to protect Indian geopolitical rights, and incorporating Indian geopolitical rights is consistent with the U.S. Constitution and principles of federalism.
Painting “American Progress” depicting the historic process of manifest destiny and colonization of the American West.
A Seminole man in sunglasses stares sternly. The caption says “stares in native.”
To be sure, the term "Indian" in the late eighteenth century was freighted with racial as well as political meanings. Anglo-Americans of the time routinely defined "Indians" as different from "white people" based on skin color. Ablavsky, Race, supra, at 1050-54. After the Revolution, Anglo-Americans specifically spoke of Indians as a distinct "race." Id. As discussed above, there are good reasons to question whether this definition was the one adopted in the Constitution. Yet insisting that the term "Indian" in the Constitution possessed racial meaning at the time of Founding would nonetheless not render "Indian" a constitutionally impermissible classification. On the contrary, because the term "Indian" appears in the Constitution, challengers to Indian classifications would be arguing, in effect, that the Constitution itself is unconstitutional. 23
A meme showing disgust at the idea of the United States colonizing Greenland but piqued interest at the idea of refusing to recognize European claims on the doctrine of discovery.