A Reexamination of Passamaquoddy v. Morton

In December 1975, the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit issued its historic decision in Joint Tribal Council of the Passamaquoddy Tribe v. Morton. That decision set in motion a sequence of events that only the most prescient of the original participants could have imagined. At its height the litigation that grew out of Passamaquoddy involved a threatened suit by the United States Justice Department on behalf of two Indian groups in Maine against the State of Maine, several of the nation's largest corporations, 350,000 residents, and scores of Maine municipalities. The plaintiffs sought possession of 12,000,000 acres of privately-owned lands, 500,000 acres of publicly-owned lands, plus $25 billion in trespass damage claims. Recognizing the enormous import of this action, the Justice Department once described the suit as "potentially the most complex litigation ever brought in the federal courts with social and economic impacts without precedent and incredible potential litigation costs to all parties."