Government Insights
Analysis and practical guides on government.
20 articles, checklists, and guides on government law, written by the attorneys at MC Law. Every piece is general information, not legal advice—for a specific matter, contact the firm.
Working with Tribal Law and Tribal Courts: A Practical Guide
This guide is the working sequence for a lawyer or an agency that has just discovered a tribal dimension to a case. It covers the three-question jurisdictional analysis that must be done before anything else, how to research a tribal code and get admitted to a tribal court, when to exhaust tribal remedies and when not to, how to draft a sovereign immunity waiver that actually works, the ICWA compliance sequence from the first hearing question through placement, how to get a tribal judgment recognized elsewhere, and how to consult with a tribe productively.
Firearms Compliance and Transfer Checklist: A Practical Checklist
This checklist covers firearms compliance from an eligibility self-check through estate transfers. It runs the prohibitor list including the categories that catch people unaware, the dealer transfer and form accuracy steps, the delay and denial response, private and interstate transfer rules, the registered-item sequence with its approval-before-possession requirement, carry permits and the reciprocity verification that must precede every trip, transport and air travel rules, storage and theft reporting, surrender order compliance, restoration routes, dealer compliance obligations, and an annual review.
Tribal Law and Indian Country Jurisdiction: Sovereignty, Criminal Authority, and ICWA
Indian country jurisdiction is the most intricate allocation of authority in American law, and the answer to almost any question in it requires knowing three facts before anything else: where the conduct occurred, who the parties are, and what kind of case it is. This article explains the statutory definition of Indian country, the criminal jurisdiction grid created by the General Crimes Act, the Major Crimes Act, and Public Law 280, the civil jurisdiction framework built on the Montana test, tribal sovereign immunity and the Indian Civil Rights Act, the structure and recognition of tribal courts, the Indian Child Welfare Act with its notice, active efforts, and placement requirements, and the recent decisions that have reshaped the field.
Agency Proceeding and Judicial Review Checklist: A Practical Checklist
This checklist runs an administrative matter from the arrival of a decision through judicial review. It is organized as sequences: reading the decision, finding the deadline before anything else, locating the organic statute and agency regulations that supply your rights, filing public records requests as the substitute for discovery, building the administrative record, preserving objections including structural constitutional ones, preparing and trying a hearing, exhausting, and going to court. The threshold barriers that stop more challenges than the merits are flagged separately, as are the deadlines that are jurisdictional in many state schemes.
Buying, Owning, and Transferring Firearms Lawfully: A Practical Guide
This guide is the compliance sequence for a lawful firearm owner. It covers how to determine your own eligibility before buying anything and why several prohibitors surprise people, how a dealer transfer actually works and how to complete the form accurately, what to do about a background check delay or denial, the interstate and private transfer rules, the registered-item process and the constructive possession trap, carry permits and the reciprocity check that must happen before every trip, transport and air travel, secure storage and theft reporting, what to do when a protective order or extreme risk order requires surrender, and the routes to restoration.
Administrative Law: Rulemaking, Adjudication, and Judicial Review
Administrative law is the operating system of the modern state, and most people encounter it without knowing its name, in a benefits denial, a licensing decision, a permit, or an enforcement action. This article explains the Administrative Procedure Act framework from the inside out: how notice and comment rulemaking works and what makes a rule vulnerable, how formal adjudication differs from the informal decisions most agencies actually make, the scope of judicial review and what arbitrary and capricious review really demands, the collapse of Chevron deference and what replaced it, the surviving but narrowed deference to an agency reading its own regulation, the major questions doctrine, the threshold barriers of standing, finality, ripeness, and exhaustion, and the constitutional pressures now reshaping agency adjudication.
Firearms Law: Federal Regulation, State Permitting, and the Second Amendment
Firearms law is three regimes stacked on each other: a federal licensing and transfer system, a separate federal registration and taxation scheme for particular categories of weapons, and fifty state systems that vary from nearly unregulated to among the most restrictive in the country. This article explains who is prohibited from possessing firearms and why that list is longer than most people know, how transfers actually work and what a straw purchase is, the registration and transfer requirements for the narrow class of regulated items, the constitutional framework from Heller through Bruen and Rahimi, state permitting and carry, extreme risk protection orders, and the routes to restoration of rights.
Administrative Practice Toolkit: Comments, Hearings, Records, and Appeals
This toolkit collects the working documents of administrative practice: a rulemaking comment template built to survive review, public records request and appeal letters, hearing request and prehearing statement forms, subpoena and exhibit tools, proposed findings of fact, objection and offer-of-proof language, a reconsideration request, a stay request to the agency, a petition for review outline, record designation and completion language, standard-of-review argument blocks, structural constitutional preservation language, and a fee application outline. Each is annotated with the provision it invokes and the failure it prevents.