Under the new policy, the attorney general must get written consent from tribes before taking certain actions that affect them. That's something few have put into practice, experts say. . . Yet federal agencies, as well as countries around the world, have been slow to implement policies to obtain tribes’ consent, even after endorsing the broad language of the U.N.’s 2007 declaration, said Carla Fredericks, director of the American Indian Law Clinic at the University of Colorado Law School. In a 2017 paper, Fredericks wrote that free, prior and informed consent is “currently an emerging norm and seen as an aspirational goal, rather than binding international law.” . . . Kristen Carpenter, a University of Colorado law professor who is a member of the United Nations’ Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, agreed that the policy announced by Washington’s attorney general last month “is much more specific than anything else I’ve seen around the world.” It may very well be the first time a state attorney general has adopted such a policy.