The record, read closely · issue articles
Who can read the law?
≈ 6 min read · or listen, or skim the bold lines
D · Draft — not verified Every claim below cites its source; where the honest answer is “not public,” the article says so — that is the finding, not a gap in it. How we verify →
What Cal asked — and what he didn’t. Cal asks about almost everything: twenty topic families measured across his turns. The readability of the law itself he raises in only about 7 of the 41 interviews where his questions are identifiable — not a criticism; nobody asks about it. That silence is the clearest opening in the record, and it is why it became this project’s written question #1.
The count. 28 of 42 candidates named a law, Title, named Act, or resolution. 0 of 42 cited a section.
Start with the question a voter, an employee, or a chapter official actually asks: where is the current law, organized by subject, that I can open and read? This article follows that question all the way down — who holds such a thing inside the government, where the public pieces live, how a person looks a law up today, how the people can propose laws, and what to demand so the question stops needing an article.
Who in government has it?
FINDING
Possibly no one holds a complete, current, topic-organized body of Navajo law — and whether anyone does is itself not public. The law assigns the job: 2 N.N.C. § 221(A) charges the Office of Legislative Counsel with codifying the law after each resolution, and the Office of Legislative Services publishes the Code and the amendment index. But the record shows codification hasn’t kept up: the published Code stops at 2009, the amendment index begins in 2014 (leaving 2010–2013 to hunting), and every resolution since lives filed by number and date, not by subject — the full picture is in The Basics. The offices closest to a working set — Legislative Counsel, the Department of Justice, the courts — work from their own files and the resolutions themselves. There are commercially compiled annotated editions in legal circles; this site doesn’t use or link them, and a body of law the people can only buy is part of the problem, not the answer.
Where the public pieces live today
OFFICIAL SOURCE
The pieces are real, and each has a door: the 2009 Code is posted online by the Office of Legislative Services; the amendment summary sheet lists resolution numbers from 2014 on; and DiBB — the Legislative Services public site at dibb.nnols.org — lets anyone view and download legislation and generate reports by year, committee, and sponsor. Law students with the Diné Nihi Kéyah Project are informally indexing the post-2009 resolutions. So the precise finding: you can look a law up — if you already know its number. What no one can do is open one current, complete, findable body of law. Assembling it is a research project, and the law should not be a research project. (If you’re motivated, the assembly method is real: 2009 text → amendment sheet → each resolution on DiBB — this site’s Law Ledger is that chart begun.)
Five Titles you cannot start from at all
FINDING
Titles 3, 8, 11, 16, and 26 appear in the published Code’s own table of contents and were never printed in it. That includes Title 11 — elections, in an election year, and Title 26 — the Local Governance Act, the chapters’ own legal framework. So yes: chapters have their own law — certified chapters gain local governing authority under Title 26 — and the officials governing under it, and the people governed by it, cannot read it in the published Code. The LGA lesson covers what the Act does — and to be precise, the Act’s text is posted publicly by the Division of Community Development as a standalone document; what’s missing is its place in the Code, where a person would look. Scattered, again — not hidden. The pattern the whole article keeps finding: the most local and most citizen-facing law is the least available.
Can the people propose laws? Yes — three ways
First, comment on legislation: proposed resolutions post for public comment on DiBB before passage (2 N.N.C. §§ 102, 164), and under the Nation’s own legislative process policy (NABIMA-16-17), anyone may initiate legislation with a delegate’s help. Second, the citizen initiative — whose rules sit in unprinted Title 11, so the people’s own initiative power is currently unreadable in the published Code. Third, the chapter resolution, the law-making the people directly control today — how, with a model to adapt.
What the interviews show
FINDING
Government reform was discussed substantively in 17 of the 42 interviews — the second-lowest of the seven areas (the counts). The readability of the law itself surfaced rarely as its own subject, which is why it’s question one of the written questions now posed to every candidate: what specifically would you do so any Diné person can read the current law? Their answers, as they arrive, publish verbatim on their profiles — the questions.
The pattern Cal keeps testing
Cal Nez’s standing challenge — find one law, using the Nation’s own websites, in ninety seconds — is this article as an experiment. What the record shows: the challenge’s premise holds for consolidated, current, findable law; and the DiBB door means the precise statement of his theory is not “the law is hidden” but “the law is scattered, and scattered is a kind of hidden.” Whether any office holds a complete internal codification can’t be verified either way — because that, too, isn’t public, which loops the theory back into The Basics.
What could be done now — regardless of who wins, regardless of the referendum
Fix #1 on What Needs to Happen Now: codify and post 2010–present. The demand isn’t for a new law — § 221(A) already assigns the duty; the ask is that an existing legal obligation be funded and performed. “Publishing the Code is a budget line.” And the pressure routes exist today: comment on DiBB, a chapter resolution calling for publication, and asking any office in writing to cite the resolution it acts under — an office that cannot name its rule makes the case for you. On November 3, the proposed constitution’s Articles X and XV address legislative structure and process, and Article XVIII the chapters — read Government Reform before you vote either way.
TAKE ACTION
Use one door once
Try the guided search, or look up one resolution on DiBB. Or ask one office, in writing, to cite the rule it acts under. Then tell us how it went, anonymously, on Participate — every attempt becomes evidence on Community Findings. The whole ledger of laws, lessons, and demands: The Law Ledger.
Up a level: What runs through all of it →
📎 Sources cited on this page (1)
A note on the law here. Section numbers are cited to the Navajo Nation Code. The most widely used published edition (Westlaw) is current only through February 11, 2014, so a citation may not reflect the very latest amendment; a signed change is also not the same as one in effect. How we handle the law →