Wayne State University Law School Assistant Professor Kirsten Matoy Carlson was selected to present a paper at the Association of American Law Schools annual meeting in January in New York City.
She will be presenting “Gambling on Congress: Indian Nations’ Federal Recognition Strategies” at the association’s Legislation and Law of the Political Process section.
The paper empirically investigates the strategies used by non-federally recognized tribes in pursuing recognition of their sovereign status by the U.S. government. It questions the conventional wisdom that politically disadvantaged groups don’t use legislative strategies and reveals that tribes use legislative strategies to educate the public, leverage institutional politics and achieve recognition.
At Wayne Law, Carlson teaches American Indian Law and Civil Procedure. She serves on the State Bar of Michigan Standing Committee on American Indian Law.
Her research focuses on legal advocacy and law reform, with particular attention on the various strategies used by Indian nations and indigenous groups to reform federal Indian law and policy effectively. Carlson’s research integrates traditional legal analysis with social science methodologies for studying legal and political advocacy.
From May 2014 through July 2016, she has a National Science Foundation Law and Social Science Program grant to fund her research project, “Legal Mobilization, Rights Claims, and Federal Indian Policy Reform.” Carlson previously received a National Science Foundation dissertation research grant to study the constitutional entrenchment of aboriginal and treaty rights in Canada. As a Fulbright Scholar, she researched attitudes toward the Waitangi Tribunal and the treaty claims settlement process in New Zealand.
Her articles have been published in the University of Colorado Law Review, American Indian Law Review, Georgia State Law Review, Michigan Law Review and Michigan State Law Review.
Prior to joining Wayne Law, she advocated nationally and internationally to protect the rights of Indian nations as a staff attorney at the Indian Law Resource Center. She led the center’s advocacy efforts to restore criminal jurisdiction to Indian nations to end violence against women in Indian Country.
Carlson earned a bachelor of arts degree in international studies from Johns Hopkins University; master of arts degree in Maaori studies from the University of Wellington, New Zealand; and law degree and doctorate in political science from the University of Michigan.
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