Mr. Chairman and members of the Commission, my name is Rodney B. Lewis. I am the General Counsel of the Gila River Indian Community, was the founding President of the Arizona Indian Bar Association and currently serve as a Lawyer Representative from Arizona to the Ninth Circuit Judicial Conference. I greatly appreciate being afforded an opportunity to offer my testimony regarding whether the Ninth Circuit should be divided into two separate federal circuits of appeal. In my view, it should not.

The Gila River Indian Community is comprised of decendants of two culturally­distinct Indian nations, the Pimas and the Maricopas. Our reservation is located immediately south of Phoenix, Arizona. The state of Arizona might be said to be the most Indian of all the United States inasmuch as twenty­one federally­recognized Indian Tribes are located within its boundaries. Indeed, of the ten largest Indian reservations in the United States, five are located in Arizona and approximately twenty seven­percent of the land within Arizona's exterior boundaries is Indian land.

Since Arizona is within the Ninth Circuit's jurisdiction, the governmental and individual interests of a concentrated number of Indian communities stand to be directly affected by any structural modification made in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

In my experience, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has well executed its responsibility for the disposition of matters of federal Indian law, that is, the body of law treating the complex relationships between Indian Tribes, the federal government and the states. Arguably, Ninth Circuit decisions constitute leading authority among the decisions of all the federal appeals circuits; thus the Ninth Circuit has contributed significantly to the federal court system's overall capacity to equitably and reasonably adjudicate matters arising from these often strained relationships. To break the Circuit into two separate fora might well disrupt the ongoing doctrinal legacy of the Circuit, an outcome that would prove of great disservice to American Indian Tribal governments across the United States.

Indian legal interests, being in their nature minority interests, are ensured better protection by a less­provincial, more diverse circuit that approaches cases with a view toward interests on a national or at least a large regional scale, rather than a smaller circuit that is more likely to be subject to the influence and persuasion of parochial interests. It is after all, national law that the federal appeal circuits primarily apply. As American Indian Tribal governments continue to acquire the sophistication lacking when questions of Indian rights were first presented to United States courts, it is fair to speculate that contests between Tribes and our legal adversaries will grow in complexity, rending even more critical, if justice is to be served, the neutrality of available fora. Tribes within the Ninth Circuit's present jurisdictional sphere would, therefore, be placed at a disadvantage to the extent the smaller circuits formed from the present Ninth Circuit are created to reflect the more localized interests of the states and non­Indian parties within the newly drawn jurisdictions.

Above all other considerations, a splitting of the Circuit must not be based on political considerations, parochial interests or the interests of the state or region a new circuit is established to serve. To any degree that the impetus for the proposal to reorganize the Ninth Circuit originated from dissatisfaction among non­Indian interests in the Pacific Northwest with the Ninth Circuit's upholding of Indian treaty rights in the Washington salmon and steelhead fishing cases, serious consideration of such proposal to reorganize must be withheld.

Indeed, any modification of the present Ninth Circuit must be required to be justified on wholly neutral political grounds and should be considered only in terms of whether such a change would support the improved efficiency and ultimate effectiveness of the federal court system. If the present Ninth Circuit were failing to function because of its size, for example, then splitting the Circuit might be necessary, but all available evidence supports a view that the Circuit is doing its job, doing it well and is certain to serve even more efficiently once long­standing vacancies on the bench are filled. Consistently, in each of my experiences before the Ninth Circuit, I have found it to be highly efficient and productive. I would urge this panel to recommend against its bifurcation.