ADJUDICATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS - COHERENCE AND CONCILIATION IN FEDERAL INDIAN LAW

Federal Indian law is rooted in conflicting principles that leave the field in a morass of doctrinal and normative incoherence. In this Comm entary, Professor Frickey begins by criticizing two recent efforts to bring coherence to this field One approach, which narrows the scope of inquiry and attempts to apply non-normative doctrinal analysis, ignor es the fictional nature of much federal Indian law doctrine and fails to appreciate the significance of normative and historical principles lurking behind the doctrine. The other approach, which seeks to constr uct a single descriptive paradigm from the case law, fails because fed eral Indian law precedents do not lend themselves to a unified theory. Professor Frickey suggests that greater coherence and respect for bas ic normative principles ave likely to result from conceiving of the fi eld as involving the process of negotiation among sovereigns rather th an of adjudication in federal court.