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Page Number: 74.0

32 

HAALAND v. BRACKEEN 

GORSUCH, J., concurring 

the Indian Commerce Clause.  That error sent this Court’s 
Indian-law jurisprudence into a tailspin from which it has
only recently begun to recover.  Understanding that error—
and the steps this Court has taken to correct it—are the last
missing pieces of the puzzle. 

In 1885, during the period of assimilationist federal pol-
icy, Congress enacted the Indian Major Crimes Act, §9, 23
Stat. 385.  Among other things, that law extended federal-
court jurisdiction over various crimes committed by Indians
against Indians on tribal lands.  Ibid.  In United States v. 
Kagama, 118 U. S. 375 (1886), this Court upheld the con-
stitutionality of that Act.  In the process, though, it stepped 
off  the  doctrinal  trail.    Instead  of  examining  the  text  and
history of the Indian Commerce Clause, the Court offered a 
free-floating  and  purposivist  account  of  the  Constitution,
describing  it  as  extending  broad  “power  [to]  the  General
Government” over tribal affairs.  Id., at 384.  Building on
that move, the Court would later come to describe the fed-
eral power over the Tribes as “plenary.”  See, e.g., Winton v. 
Amos, 255 U. S. 373, 391 (1921); Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock, 187 
U. S. 553, 565 (1903).

Perhaps  the  Court  meant  well.    Surely  many  of  its  so-
called  “plenary  power”  cases  reached  results  explainable
under  a  proper  reading  of  the  Constitution’s  enumerated 
powers.  Maybe the turn of phrase even made some sense:
Congress’s power with regard to the Tribes is “plenary” in 
that it leaves no room for State involvement.  See Ablavsky
2015, at 1014 (“[T]he Court use[d] the term [plenary] inter-
changeably with ‘exclusive’ ”).  But as sometimes happens
when this Court elides text and original meaning in favor 
of  broad  pronouncements  about  the  Constitution’s  pur-
poses, the plenary-power idea baked in the prejudices of the
day.  Cf. Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U. S. 537 (1896).  The Court 
suggested  that  the  federal  government’s  total  power  over
the Tribes derived from its supposedly inherent right to “en-
force its laws” over “th[e] remnants of a race once powerful,