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Page Number: 66

38 

OKLAHOMA v. CASTRO-HUERTA 

GORSUCH, J., dissenting 

(2009) (Table 1.6).

In recounting all this, I do not profess certainty about the
optimal law enforcement arrangements in Oklahoma.  I do 
not pretend to know all the relevant facts, let alone how to 
balance each of them in this complex picture.  Nor do I claim 
to  know  what  weight  to  give  historical  wrongs  or  future 
hopes.  I offer the preceding observations only to illustrate 
the  one  thing  I  am  sure  of:  This  Court  has  no  business 
usurping  congressional  decisions  about  the  appropriate
balance between federal, tribal, and state interests.  If the 
Court’s  ruling  today  sounds  like  a  legislative  committee 
report  touting  the  benefits  of  some  newly  proposed  bill, 
that’s  because  it  is  exactly  that.    And  given  that  a  nine-
member court is a poor substitute for the people’s elected 
representatives,  it  is  no  surprise  that  the  Court’s  cost-
benefit  analysis  is  radically  incomplete.    The  Court’s 
decision  is  not  a  judicial  interpretation  of  the  law’s
meaning; it is the pastiche of a legislative process. 

C 

As  unsound  as  the  Court’s  decision  is,  it  would  be  a 
mistake to overlook its limits.  In the end, the Court admits 
that  tribal  sovereignty  can  displace  state  authority  even
without a preemptive statute.  See Part III–A, supra.  To be 
sure,  the  Court  proceeds  to  disparage  a  federal  statute 
requiring Oklahoma to obtain tribal consent before trying
any crime involving an Indian victim within the Cherokee
Reservation.  But look at what the Court leaves unresolved. 
The Court does not pass on Public Law 280’s provision that
States  “shall  not”  be  entitled  to  assume  jurisdiction  on
tribal lands until they “appropriately amen[d ]” state laws 
disclaiming authority over tribal reservations.  25 U. S. C. 
§ 1324.  The Court gestures toward the Cherokee’s treaties 
and the Oklahoma Enabling Act, but ultimately abandons 
any argument that those treaties were lawfully abrogated 
or  that  the  Oklahoma  Enabling  Act  endowed  Oklahoma