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Page Number: 112.0

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HAALAND v. BRACKEEN 

THOMAS, J., dissenting 

  At  bottom,  Kagama  simply  departed  from  the  text  and
original meaning of the Constitution, which confers only the 
enumerated powers discussed above.  Those powers are not 
boundless  and  did  not  operate  differently  with  respect  to 
Indian  tribes  at  the  Founding;  instead,  they  conferred  all 
the authority that the new Federal Government needed at
the time to deal with Indian tribes.  When dealing with In-
dian  affairs,  as  with  any  other  affairs,  we  should  always
evaluate  whether  a  law  can  be  justified  by  the  Constitu-
tion’s  enumerated  powers,  rather  than  pointing  to  amor-
phous powers with no textual or historical basis. 

IV 
Properly understood, the Constitution’s enumerated pow-
ers cannot support ICWA.  Not one of those powers, as orig-
inally  understood,  comes  anywhere  close  to  including  the
child custody proceedings of U. S. citizens living within the 
sole jurisdiction of States.  Moreover, ICWA has no consti-
tutional  basis  even  under  Kagama  and  later  precedents.
While those cases have extended the Federal Government’s 
Indian-related powers beyond the original understanding of 
the  Constitution,  this  Court  has  never  extended  them  far 
enough  to  support  ICWA.    Rather,  virtually  all  of  this
Court’s  modern  Indian-law  precedents—upholding  laws 
that  regulate  tribal  lands,  tribal  governments,  and  com-
merce with tribes—can be understood through a core con-
ceptual  framework  that  at  least  arguably  corresponds  to 
Founding-era  practices.  To  extend  those  cases  to  uphold
ICWA  thus  would  require  ignoring  the  context  of  those
precedents,  treating  their  loose  “plenary  power”  language
as talismanic, and transforming that power into the truly
unbounded, absolute power that they disclaim.  The basic 
premise  that  the  powers  of  the  Federal  Government  are 
limited and defined should counsel against taking that step.