Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/21-376_7l48.pdf
Page Number: 57

Cite as:  599 U. S. ____ (2023) 

15 

GORSUCH, J., concurring 

Confederation was marred by significant conflict, driven by
state and individual intrusions on tribal land.  But the Con-
stitution  that  followed  reflected  an  understanding  that
Tribes enjoy a power to rule themselves that no other gov-
ernmental body—state or federal—may usurp. 

Several  constitutional  provisions  prove  the  point.    One 
sure  tell  is  the  federal  government’s  treaty  power.  See 
Art. II, §2, cl. 2.  Because the United States “adopted and 
sanctioned  the  previous  treaties  with  the  Indian  nations,
[it] consequently admit[ted the Tribes’] rank among those 
powers who are capable of making treaties.”  Worcester, 6 
Pet., at 559.  Similarly, the Commerce Clause vests in Con-
gress  the  power  to  “regulate  Commerce with  foreign  Na-
tions,”  “among  the  several  States,”  and  “with  the  Indian 
Tribes,” Art. I, §8, cl. 3—conferrals of authority with respect
to three separate sorts of sovereign entities that do not en-
tail the power to eliminate any of them.  Even beyond that,
the Constitution exempts from the apportionment calculus 
“Indians  not  taxed.”  §2,  cl. 3.    This  formula  “ratified  the 
legal treatment of tribal Indians [even] within the [S]tates 
as  separate  and  sovereign  peoples,  who  were  simply  not
part of the state polities.”  R. Clinton, The Dormant Indian 
Commerce  Clause,  27  Conn.  L. Rev.  1055,  1150  (1995) 
(Clinton 1995).  (The Fourteenth Amendment would later
reprise this language, Amdt. 14, §2, confirming both the en-
during sovereignty of Tribes and the bedrock principle that
Indian  status  is  a  “political  rather  than  racial”  classifica-
tion, Morton v. Mancari, 417 U. S. 535, 553, n. 24 (1974).) 
Given these express provisions, the early conduct of the
political branches comes as little surprise.  From the begin-
ning,  the  “Washington  Administration  acknowledged  con-
siderable Native autonomy.”  G. Ablavsky, Beyond the In-
dian  Commerce  Clause,  124  Yale  L. J.  1012,  1067  (2015) 
(Ablavsky 2015).  Henry Knox, President Washington’s Sec-
retary of War, described the Tribes as akin to “foreign na-
tions, not as the subjects of any particular [S]tate.”  Letter