Page 30 PoLAR: Vol. 38, No. 1 Larry Nesper University of Wisconsin–Madison Ordering Legal Plurality: Allocating Jurisdiction in State and Tribal Courts in Wisconsin This article examines how a Wisconsin statute passed in 2009 that authorized state court judges to transfer cases to American Indian tribal courts unfolded as a po- litical and legal process that was both informed by and produced by fundamental conceptions of cultural difference. It calls specific attention to jurisprudential differ- ences in the form of jury trials and peacemaking in figuring the differences between conceptions of tribal membership and state citizenship. [concurrent jurisdiction, cul- tural difference, tribal courts, peacemaking, state-tribal relations, tribal sovereignty, neoliberalism] Although a number of legal scholars have given some attention to ways in which cultural differences are manifest in American Indian tribal court jurisprudence (Barsh 1999; Cooter and Fikentscher 1998; Fletcher 2007; Pommersheim 1997; Valencia- Weber 1994), only a few cultural anthropologists (MacLachlan 1962; Miller 2001; Nesper 2007; Richland 2008) have undertaken ethnographic work in the tribal courts themselves. Herein I extend this latter ethnographic work into the domain of the relationship between the state of Wisconsin and the American Indian tribes within the state by examining the ways in which different representations of cultural practice shaped the process of legal codification in the development of Wisconsin Statute P.L. 280, section 801.54, Discretionary Transfer of Civil Actions to Tribal Court. In his magisterial Aboriginal Societies and the Common Law: A History of Sovereignty, Status, and Self-Determination, McHugh (2004) meticulously traced the ways in which law has shaped relations between settler North American and Aus- tralasian polities and aboriginal peoples. He showed that when aboriginal peoples were threatened with termination of their special legal status, beginning shortly after World War II, they were able to mobilize a variety of resources and to propel these polities into legal regimes that recognized their special status; this turned liberalism on its head and demanded equality at the governmental level (354). In the United States, President Richard Nixon’s address to Congress on July 8, 1970, acknowl- edged and advanced this movement when he declared that the goal of the new policy toward American Indians would be “to strengthen the Indian’s sense of autonomy without threatening his sense of community. We must assure the Indian that he can assume control of his own life without being separated involuntarily from the tribal PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review, Vol. 38, Number 1, pps. 30–52. ISSN 1081-6976, electronic ISSN 1555-2934. C  2015 by the American Anthropological Association. All rights reserved. DOI: 10.1111/plar.12085.