Mr. PERLMAN. We have to meet those deadlines.

Senator MCCARRAN. So does a private concern have to meet those deadlines.

Mr. PERLMAN. There is no delay so far as the Government is concerned.

Senator MCCARRAN. Supposing the defendant, the private citizen, being the aggrieved party or considering himself the aggrieved party, proposes a petition for certiorari. Do you suppose he submits that to another group of attorneys somewhere and asks them to come in? Mr. PERLMAN. Yes, sir; very frequently that is done. I know that that happens in a lot of cases. They take in lawyers who are expert in Supreme Court practice.

Senator MCCARRAN. Oh, certainly, to argue the case.

Mr. PERLMAN. Not only to argue it, but to prepare the petition.

DOUBLE WORK INVOLVED

Senator MCCARRAN. All right, I am just drawing your attention to the lag because there is a lag, there is no question about it. There is double work in there. There is not any question in my mind about that.

Mr. PERLMAN. I do not think that is a fair statement, Senator. Senator MCCARRAN. All right, let us go on. Fair or not fair, let us go on. Will you go ahead?

Mr. PERLMAN. I have answered your question.

REQUEST FOR ADDITIONAL PERSONNEL

Senator MCCARRAN. Now, you require four additional lawyers to carry on this line of work that you have described to us today? Mr. PERLMAN. We ask for three.

Senator McCARRAN. Three?

Mr. PERLMAN. Yes.

Senator MCCARRAN. And one additional clerk?

Mr. PERLMAN. Yes; a stenographer.

Senator MCCARRAN. How far behind in your work are you now, if at all?

Mr. PERLMAN. We cannot be behind.

Senator MCCARRAN. In other words, you are current with your work?

Mr. PERLMAN. We have to be.

Senator MCCARRAN. You are as current as you can be?

Mr. PERLMAN. We have to be current because we have to meet the dead lines in the different courts.

Senator MCCARRAN. All right. Are there any questions?

QUESTION OF INTEREST ON INDIAN CLAIMS

I want to go back to this matter of the Indian claims. The committee is concerned about the Indian claims, especially the interest feature. Have you made any study of this situation in your department with respect to what legislation, if any, could be enacted constitutionally to take care of this enormous interest load when it appears in these claims? A claim of $3,000,000 carrying a $14,000,000 interest attachment seems outrageous.

Senator FERGUSON. Are these tort claims? They are not contract claims, are they?

Chairman MCKELLAR. They are treaty claims.

Senator FERGUSON. Under what law is interest allowed? Are they tort or contract or just what?

Mr. PERLMAN. The case that I argued last week, and which I had been discussing here, Senator, before you came in was a case in which the Supreme Court found that there had been a taking. It was not a tort. The question that was argued in the Supreme Court was whether this was a taking under the Constitution, article V, for which just compensation should be allowed, or whether it was a taking for which compensation was allowed under the jurisdictional act that had been passed by Congress in 1935.

Now, when that case was originally argued in the Supreme Court, the majority of the Court found that the United States was liable; but that majority did not agree on the basis for liability. Four members of the Court indicated, without saying so, that it was a taking under the Constitution. They treated it as a taking, but they did not specifically say that it was a taking under the fifth amendment. The fifth member of the Court who held the United States liable felt that the liability was created by the act passed by Congress. So that the five that held the United States liable did not agree on the basis of liability.

I pointed that out to them in the argument in the second case. There were three members of the Court in a minority who stated that we were not liable either under the fifth amendment or under the act. Senator FERGUSON. Under no circumstances?

Mr. PERLMAN. Under no conditions.

Senator FERGUSON. Now, who places the interest? Does the lower court judgment place it? Have you ever contested these interest. charges?

Mr. PERLMAN. This last case that we argued, as I told the Senators before, is the first occasion that Court of Claims has found the United States liable for original Indian occupancy. It is the first time, therefore, that interest was ever added to a claim of that character. There have been other cases in which interest was allowed where there was a taking of what was a recognized title, that is, title that had been conferred upon Indian bands by treaty entered into and approved by the United States Senate. Where there had been a taking there, there had been interest allowed in some of those cases. There had been interest allowed, I believe, in cases that involved the commission of torts of some kind.

TOTAL CLAIMS

I believe it is fair to say that while I said that there were $14,000,000,000 worth of claims filed

Senator FERGUSON. $14,000,000,000?

Mr. PERLMAN. I think so. That is just an estimate, but I ought to say in that connection that many of those claims are not based on the kind of taking that was involved in this recent case.

Senator MCCARRAN. What are they based on when they carry interest?

Mr. PERLMAN. Some of them, Senator, are based on claims of the taking of parts of lands that were involved in treaties where we had recognized their right to a reservation.

Senator FERGUSON. After we recognized their right, we went in and took part of their reservation.

Mr. PERLMAN. Sometimes it is a case of some act for which they say they were not fully compensated. There are all kinds of bases for these claims. Some of them are tort claims where we went in and took a lot of timber on their lands. We recognized that they had title to those lands, but we took the timber. They claimed that they were not adequately compensated for it, and that it was done without

consent.

Senator FERGUSON. How does the Federal Government get into the taking of timber? How would the Federal Government take timber?

Mr. PERLMAN. That may have been a hundred years ago that we took it.

Senator FERGUSON. I mean the Federal Government as the Government.

Mr. PERLMAN. I may have part of the answer to that because I just happened to be chatting with somebody yesterday who was talking about a timber claim, and I asked him the same question that you asked me. Apparently at one stage or another-and I don't know when this occurred-the Government, and it may have been the Interior Department, took timber and sold it for the account of the Indians.

Senator FERGUSON. Yes. I think we did some of that a couple of years ago. That is why I have called it communism, that is, this Indian business. We were out there cutting down the timber and were going to divide the money up. After we put the money into the Treasury, we were to give them a few dollars of it.

ATTORNEYS INVOLVED IN INDIAN CLAIMS CASE

Chairman MCKELLAR. I would like to talk about this case in which you said there was a $3,000,000 judgment and that the interest ran the amount up to $17,000,000. Take that particular case, just that case, and tell us who the attorneys were in that case for the claimants? Mr. PERLMAN. I really do not know, sir.

Chairman McKELLAR. Can you get that information for the record? Mr. PERLMAN. Yes, indeed. I argued the case against two of them. (The following additional information was supplied:)

In the Tillamooks case, which was recently argued, the lawyers who appeared for the 25 bands of Indians in Oregon were L. A. Gravelle and Edward F. Howrey, Shorham Building, Washington, D. C. With them on the brief were Douglas Whitlock, Shorham Building, Washington, D. C., John G. Mullen, North Bend, Oreg., and E. L. Crawford, of Salem, Oreg. In the Ute Indian case (330 U. S. 169), the Indians were represented by Ernest L. Wilkinson, who argued the case, and by John W. Cragun, Francis M. Goodwin, and Glen A. Wilkinson. In the case of the Shoshone Indians v. United States (324 U. S. 335), the Indians were represented by Ernest L. Wilkinson, who argued the case with Joseph Chez, John W. Cragun, Herman J. Galloway, Frank K. Nebeker, Charles J. Kappler, and Clinton D. Vernon. In the Tillamooks case, Mr. Wilkinson requested leave to file a brief amicus curiae, asseting that he was attorney for "the Uintah Band of Ute Indians, the Shoshone Indians of Utah, Idaho, and Nevada, the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewas, and the Indians of California, all of which have claims against the United States involving the question presented to this honorable

court in this proceeding." A similar request was filed on behalf of the Association of American Indians Affairs, Inc., by their general counsel, Felix S. Cohen.

Chairman McKELLAR. I know you did, but I wanted to know who the lawyers were on the other side. In the old days when I practiced law, I always knew who was on the other side, and I just thought you would remember.

Mr. PERLMAN. There were two of them that appeared in court. I just do not remember their names because I just saw them that one day for a few minutes.

Chairman McKELLAR. Well, you can supply that for the record? Mr. PERLMAN. Certainly, Senator.

Senator MCCARRAN. In that case, if I have the same case in mind, I heard there were 50 attorneys involved. Whether I have the same case in mind, I do not know.

Mr. PERLMAN. There weren't 50 listed on any records that I saw, on any briefs.

PROPOSED LEGISLATION PROHIBITING INTEREST

Senator FERGUSON. Can you tell us, now or later, whether or not Congress can pass a law to stop this interest, or are we helpless? Do we just have to pay whatever the courts say?

Mr. PERLMAN. I have hopes of winning the case that I argued, the interest case. I think that Congress probably does have within its authority the power to handle all of these Indian claims in some way. The method that is being followed now is a comparatively recent one. There have been a number of acts passed since the early thirties that opened the courts for the filing of a lot of claims which up to that time had not been considered in any court.

Senator FERGUSON. I would like to ask you this question and get your opinion on it: While these acts were passed in the thirties, does the Congress have the right to repeal those statutes and take away those rights?

Mr. PERLMAN. I would think so. The only difficulty that you would find, I think, is that once that power was given there were a lot of things immediately filed under it, and they were adjudicated. Senator FERGUSON. You mean that on those we may not be able to do anything?

Mr. PERLMAN. That is right.

Senator FERGUSON. But then can we at this late date say that we will not pay interest or will only pay a certain rate of interest? I want to be fair to these people. But it appears to me that if we are going to have a $3,000,000 judgment, where people did not have any right at all, and then add $14,000,000 to that amount in terms of interest, and there could not be any proof that they could have used the land and that this was compensation for some real loss other than just the value of the land, we have a situation that requires serious study.

Chairman MCKELLAR. There seems to be also great confusion about the bands that actually did make claims. Mr. Perlman emphasized that.

Mr. PERLMAN. I told the Senators before you came in that it is hard to identify the people involved.

Chairman MCKELLAR. The people who are actually entitled to the money may not get it at all.

Senator FERGUSON. We may have more lawyers involved than we have real Indians.

Chairman McKELLAR. We may. That is why I asked who the counsel were.

Just one moment, please. I have one more question. I have already asked Mr. Perlman to furnish the names of the lawyers in these cases, especially the one which he has been talking about. To my mind, it appears to me that this is likely to be more a case of lawyers than a case of Indians.

Senator FERGUSON. You may get a lot of solicitation in these cases.

ATTORNEYS SOLICITING INDIAN CLAIMS CASES

Senator MCCARRAN. Have you ever gone into that phase of it? Is it not true that there is a group that makes it their business to go out and build up these cases and then solicit the Indian activity?

Mr. PERLMAN. Well, Senator, I cannot answer that. I do not know whether they solicit the Indian activity. It is my definite impression that there is a group of lawyers whose main business, if not sole business, is the prosecution of these Indian claims.

Senator MCCARRAN. Surely.

Mr. PERLMAN. That group continuously lobbies in Congress for the passage of legislation that opens up these kinds of suits.

Senator FERGUSON. And when we pass this legislation, we do not see these jokers which supply these lawyers with claims.

Mr. PERLMAN. That is right. These same lawyers or other interested parties on behalf of the Indians appear not only here before Congress but they are the ones who institute the cases before the Court of Claims.

Perhaps I should say that they are under some rule or regulation when the claims are finally adjudicated to the extent that, if they are successful, they apply in the Court of Claims for fees that do not exceed 10 percent. I think they usually ask for the full 10 percent. I think that has been going on for a number of years.

Senator FERGUSON. But when you start to get 10 percent of the amounts of some of these claims, you are getting some fees. Mr. PERLMAN. That is right; you are getting some fees.

Senator FERGUSON. They are big fees.

Mr. PERLMAN. Apparently it is a very lucrative field.

Senator FERGUSON. Mr. Chairman, could we not somehow get some advice on this matter and as to what may be coming up in the future on these things?

Senator MCCARRAN. I do not think you were here when the Attorney General was present. I am going to read an excerpt from the record.

Senator FERGUSON. We have so many of these duplicate sessions. I have been over to the Atomic Energy Committee.

Senator MCCARRAN. The quotation from the testimony of the Attorney General is as follows:

Perhaps we might find something that we think would meet the constitutional test. I think a review of some of the briefs that we have filed in the courts in contesting these cases would be very interesting to the committee; and while they do not set forth the legislative proposals, they do set forth legal arguments that, though they have not been sustained in the court, could be sustained if supported by legislation. I would be glad to undertake in the Department a