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Page Number: 106

24 

HAALAND v. BRACKEEN 

THOMAS, J., dissenting 

But  that  authority  is  a  foreign,  not  domestic,  affairs 
power.  It comprehends external relations, like matters of 
war, peace, and diplomacy—not internal affairs like adop-
tion  proceedings.    The  Court  made  that  point  explicit  in 
Curtiss-Wright:  The  “power  over  external  affairs  [is]  in
origin and essential character different from that over in-
ternal affairs.”  299 U. S., at 319; see also Youngstown Sheet 
& Tube Co. v. Sawyer, 343 U. S. 579, 635, n. 2 (1952) (Jack-
son, J., concurring in judgment and opinion of Court) (rec-
ognizing this distinction).  For external affairs, the Consti-
tution  grants  the  Federal  Government  a  wider  authority;
but  for  internal  affairs,  the  Constitution  provides  fewer,
more discrete powers.  See, e.g., Curtiss-Wright, 299 U. S., 
at  315,  319;  Zivotofsky,  576  U. S.,  at  34–35  (opinion  of 
THOMAS, J.). 

Again, all those limits dovetail with the historical prac-
tices of the Founding era.  As discussed above, the Found-
ing-era  Government  undertook  a  wide  array  of  measures 
with  respect  to  Indian  tribes.    But,  apart  from  measures 
dealing with commerce, most (if not all) of the Federal Gov-
ernment’s  actions  toward  Indians  either  treated  them  as 
sovereign entities or regulated citizens on Indian lands who
might threaten to breach treaties with Indians or otherwise 
disrupt the peace.11  For example, early treaties that dealt 

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11 The closest possible exception from this era was a provision in the
Trade  and  Intercourse  Act  of  1822  (later  enacted  in  the  Act  of  1834), 
which provided that, “in all trials about the right of property in which 
Indians shall be party on one side and white persons on the other, the 
burden of proof shall rest upon the white person, in every case in which 
the Indian shall make out a presumption of title in himself from the fact 
of previous possession and ownership.”  §4, 3 Stat. 683; §22, 4 Stat. 733. 
But even that statute appears to be merely part of the general “design” 
of the Acts: to “protect the rights of Indians to their properties” “[b]ecause 
of recurring trespass upon and illegal occupancy of Indian territory” by 
frontier settlers.  See Wilson v. Omaha Tribe, 442 U. S. 653, 664 (1979).
Viewed as such, this unremarkable provision only furthered the foreign-
affairs and commerce powers of the Federal Government by preventing