Opinion ID: 513936
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Inherent Right of External Sovereignty

Text: 69 If exclusive national power to extinguish Indian title during the Confederation with respect to lands within state borders was not supportable by Article IX(1) or Article IX(4), appellants contend that such power arose from the United States' inherent right of external sovereignty. This argument relies on the analysis of external sovereignty set forth by the Supreme Court in United States v. Curtiss-Wright Export Corp., 299 U.S. 304, 57 S.Ct. 216, 81 L.Ed. 255 (1936). 70 Curtiss-Wright involved a challenge to the validity of a presidential proclamation barring the sale of arms to Bolivia, a nation then engaged in war in the Chaco. The proclamation was challenged on the ground that the joint resolution of Congress under which it issued was an unconstitutionally broad delegation of power. The Court rejected the challenge, concluding that the delegation objection was not valid with respect to the President's conduct of the foreign relations of the United States. In reaching this conclusion, the Court articulated the principle of external sovereignty. The Court reasoned that international powers, id. at 316, 57 S.Ct. at 219, were never possessed by the colonies and therefore could not have been transferred by the newly established states to the national government when the nation was created. Such powers, being an attribute of sovereignty under the law of nations, were deemed to pass directly to the United States at the instant of independence from Great Britain. Id. Though the Court's opinion is concerned with national and especially presidential power under the Constitution, it is clear that Justice Sutherland believed that the scope of international powers was equally extensive during the period between the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution: 71 As a result of the separation from Great Britain by the colonies acting as a unit, the powers of external sovereignty passed from the Crown not to the colonies severally, but to the colonies in their collective and corporate capacity as the United States of America. 72 Id. Some of the historians who testified in the trial court in this litigation advanced strong arguments for doubting the correctness of this proposition, but we are obliged to take our instruction as the Supreme Court gives it. 10 73 Accepting the principle that the national government possessed inherent powers of external sovereignty during the confederal period, we nevertheless reject appellants' claim that the existence of such powers precluded the states from acquiring Indian title to land within their borders without the consent of Congress. First, we do not agree with the premise of appellants' argument that the powers of external sovereignty included authority over all purchases of Indian land. Indeed, we have considerable doubt whether the international powers discussed in Curtiss-Wright included any authority with respect to Indians. The whole tenor of the Court's discussion concerns international relations, the very matters that during the Confederation were the subject of the powers enumerated in Article IX(1), which did not include Indian affairs. We recognize, however, that Indian affairs do not fall neatly into the category of either international or domestic matters, and it is surely arguable that on matters concerning war and peace with the Indians, the national government did possess the inherent powers that Curtiss-Wright ascribed to the national government in the realm of traditionally international matters. But even if this is so, it is far too extravagant an extension of the concept of external sovereignty to maintain that it includes authority over all purchases of Indian land. To whatever extent external sovereignty entitled the Confederal Congress to treat with the Indians on matters of war and peace, it did not vest the United States with a right of extinguishment with respect to land acquisitions by the states that did not implicate those matters. 74 Appellants appear to suggest, however, that New York's 1785 and 1788 purchases of Oneida lands did implicate issues of war and peace by posing a threat to the peace with the Six Nations that resulted from the Treaty of Fort Stanwix. This suggestion raises a question of justiciability that was not considered in Oneida I--whether a federal court may invalidate a state purchase of Indian land on the ground that the purchase posed a threat to peace with the Indians. This issue arises with respect to both appellants' claim based on external sovereignty and their claim, considered below, based on the Treaty of Fort Stanwix. 75 Even under the Constitution, with federal courts authorized by statute to decide questions arising under federal law, including treaties, it is clear that many questions concerning peace and war are not appropriate for determination by the Judicial Branch. The Supreme Court declared more than a century ago, for example, that the determination of the end of hostilities requires reference to some public act of the political departments of the government to fix the dates. The Protector, 12 Wall. (79 U.S.) 700, 702, 20 L.Ed. 463 (1871). Previously the Court disclaimed authority to adjudicate the correctness of a decision of the President determining the existence of sufficiently imminent danger of invasion to warrant calling forth state militias. Martin v. Mott, 12 Wheat. (25 U.S.) 19, 6 L.Ed. 537 (1827). It may well be, as the Court has also indicated, that some issues concerning the existence of hostilities may not require deference to the decisions of the political branches, see Baker v. Carr, 369 U.S. 186, 211-12, 82 S.Ct. 691, 706-07, 7 L.Ed.2d 663 (1962); Woods v. Miller Co., 333 U.S. 138, 144, 68 S.Ct. 421, 424, 92 L.Ed. 596 (1948). But it would be an extraordinary assertion of judicial authority under the Constitution for a federal court to determine whether action of a state posed a sufficient threat to peace to warrant invalidation because of conflict with inherent national power arising from external sovereignty. We think it likely that a federal court would disclaim such authority unless acting at the request of the United States in a lawsuit authorized by statute. Cf. Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, 343 U.S. 579, 72 S.Ct. 863, 96 L.Ed 1153 (1952). If under the Constitution an Article III court could probably not, in the absence of a statute, deem justiciable the issue of whether a state land purchase imperiled the peace, it surely cannot do so when the challenge to the purchase arises under the Articles of Confederation. Thus, to the extent that the appellants' external sovereignty argument would require us to determine whether New York's land purchases in 1785 and 1788 posed a threat to peace with the Indians, we conclude that this issue is not justiciable. 76 Our second reason for rejecting the external sovereignty argument proceeds from the explicit recognition in Curtiss-Wright that the inherent power there recognized like every other governmental power, must be exercised in subordination to the applicable provisions of the Constitution. 299 U.S. at 320, 57 S.Ct. at 221. That limiting principle must have been equally applicable to whatever inherent powers the national government possessed under the Confederation. If anything, it had more force prior to the establishment of the more perfect Union. As we have earlier concluded, the organic law of the Confederation included in Article IX(4) a reservation of right to the States that enabled them to purchase Indian land within their borders and thereby to extinguish Indian title. Even an expansive reading of Curtiss-Wright does not support inherent national authority that may override this limitation. 77