This is the Cator Daily Podcast for Friday, July 10th, 2020. I'm Caleb Brown.

For the purposes of federal criminal law, a very large chunk of Oklahoma is Indian country.

Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote for the majority of the Supreme Court and did so simply

by holding government to its word.

Cato's Walter Olson describes the holding in Magirt v. Oklahoma.

For about a split second, I thought there were going to be a lot of really angry

former Oklahomaans who suddenly learned that they did not in fact own the property on which

their homes sat but this is we're talking about Indian territory for the purposes of specific federal law is

that right?

Yes Indian country.

And that's a specific term in federal law with its own meanings.

And it does not require, and this is one of the issues in the case does not require that Indians own all or even most of the actual plots of land there.

With that out of the way, this is talking about Indian country only for the specific purposes of federal statute.

What does that mean?

In the case at hand, it means that the man who was convicted in Oklahoma

court can get a trial in federal court instead.

But the particular law that dictates,

that results is just one of many federal laws

that make Indian country different, that mean that sometimes tribes have rights to do things,

environmental complaints for example.

For Indian countries, they would not have other places.

We don't know all of the different ways in which federal law is now going to change,

...