increased influence of the courts and "[t]he sheer volume of these cases" which threaten "to take policy-making out of the hands of elected representatives and put it into the hands of a small cadre of judges, lawyers, law professors, and expert witnesses." Although Flanagan admits that he has profited as expert witness, he also believes that "[this] flood of litigation is detrimental to democracy." Research and scholarship Tom Flanagan has widely published in areas such as political science, public policy, political theory and aboriginal land claims, from a libertarian perspective. Louis Riel Flanagan has written about his change of views regarding Métis leader Louis Riel: Flanagan developed a theory that Riel could be understood as a millenarian prophet, not just as a political figure. He translated and edited Riel's diaries and co-edited a volume of Riel's youthful poetry which won the 1978 Prix Champlain. He also published the book Louis 'David' Riel: Prophet of the New World, which won the Canadian Biography Award from the University of British Columbia. Flanagan later participated in the "Louis Riel Project", collecting and publishing all of Riel's writings, which have been dispersed among more than 40 archives in Canada and the United States. The University of Alberta Press published the work in 1985 to commemorate the centennial of the North-West Rebellion. In connection with this work, Flanagan also published a reinterpretation of the North-West Rebellion, highlighting how the government had responded to Métis land claims. Litigation over Métis claims Flanagan was retained by the federal Department of Justice in litigation over Métis claims in Manitoba. His 1991 book Metis Lands in Manitoba, won the 1992 Margaret McDonald/McWilliams Medal, awarded by the Manitoba Historical Society for the best book of the year on Manitoba history. First Nations, Second Thoughts Flanagan later published the controversial First Nations, Second Thoughts, which critiqued the report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples. The book received the Donner Prize for the best book of the year on Canadian public policy in 2000, and the Donald Smiley Prize from the Canadian Political Science Association for the best book on Canadian government and politics. In his 2002 review, Yale D. Belanger, compared Alan Cairn's publication entitled Citizens Plus with Flanagan's First Nations? Second Thoughts. He concluded that the ideas in First Nations? Second Thoughts should be made publicly available and read as a companion piece with Cairn's Citizens Plus. The books