Keith Richotte, The Worst Trickster Story Ever Told: Native America, the Supreme Court, and the U.S. Constitution (2025).

The library has just added The Worst Trickster Story Ever Told: Native America, the Supreme Court, and the U.S. Constitution to our collection, and it is a terrific read on Native American history and law generally as well as a deep dive into the issue of the U.S. Supreme Court’s plenary power.

Plenary power is the power that the U.S. federal government has over Native America – a group of ostensibly sovereign nations that are somehow still ruled over in many unjust ways by the United States, or as Richotte explains it, “the federal government has given itself the authority to reach directly into Native America for whatever purpose it deems necessary.” (29) Initially a creation of racist ideology in the 1880s asserting a need for protecting “inferior races” with no constitutional basis, U.S. Supreme Court case law evolved the doctrine over the twentieth century to have a constitutional basis. Richotte casts this as the “central mystery” of the book: how did this legal doctrine get from its past construction to its present one?

Richotte, currently the Director of the Indigenous People’s Law and Policy Program and Professor of Law at the University of Arizona, formerly a professor in UNC’s American Studies department, and a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians, brings a very different approach to writing legal history than your typical academic work. Richotte uses trickster stories to frame, explain, and critique his story of the Supreme Court’s evolving doctrine.

Humor and storytelling play a large role in The Worst Trickster Story ever told, which makes it very enjoyable to read, but also makes his criticisms of America’s shortcomings even more biting. And do not miss the footnotes! In addition to the usual work of citing sources and supporting claims, Richotte uses his footnotes to provide extra, often very humorous, commentary on many issues in the text.

The Worst Trickster Story Ever Told is a key work on a central aspect of Native American legal history and a great read for anyone interested in Native American history and the history of the U.S. Supreme Court.