Opinion ID: 773865
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: duro, the icra, and inherent power

Text: 22 Duro is the most recent in a line of cases in which the Supreme Court has examined the nature of tribal criminal jurisdiction over various categories of defendants. Prior to Duro, the Court had held that tribal courts do not have inherent criminal jurisdiction to prosecute non-Indians, Oliphant, 435 U.S. at 208, but that they do have inherent jurisdiction to prosecute tribal members, Wheeler, 435 U.S. at 323-24. In Duro, the Supreme Court considered whether an Indian tribe may assert criminal jurisdiction over a defendant who is an Indian but not a tribal member. 495 U.S. at 679. It concluded that tribes do not possess this form of sovereign authority. Id. at 685. 23 In reaching this conclusion, the Court undertook the historical approach previously employed in Wheeler, examining whether this was a form of power that was necessarily divested at the time of the tribe's incorporation within the territory of the United States. Wheeler, 435 U.S. at 322. The Court concluded that the power to prosecute nonmember Indians was a power necessarily surrendered by the tribes in their submission to the overriding sovereignty of the United States. Duro, 495 U.S. at 693; see also id. at 685-88 (discussing tribal sovereignty and divestment of power). That is, the Court concluded that the tribes' inherent authority never included such powers. 24 The historical nature of the Court's inquiry bears emphasis. Throughout Duro, the Court used terms with a temporal component. It spoke of retained sovereignty, id. at 685, retained tribal power, id., and the sovereignty which the Indians implicitly lost, id. at 686. Much of the Court's analysis was explicitly historical. The Court considered the history of tribal jurisdiction at length, pointing to various federal jurisdictional statutes, the courts of Indian offenses, and the history of tribal courts. Id. at 688-91. This approach was not surprising, as Duro chiefly relied on two earlier cases--Wheeler and Oliphant--that employed a similarly historical methodology. In evaluating the reach of tribal criminal jurisdiction over members and non-Indians, respectively, both cases relied extensively on the history of tribal jurisdiction. See Wheeler, 435 U.S. at 323-26; Oliphant , 435 U.S. at 196-208. And in both cases, the Supreme Court looked to the necessarily-historical question of implicit divestiture. Wheeler, 435 U.S. at 326; Oliphant, 435 U.S. at 208-10; see also Means, 154 F.3d at 945 (Most of Duro is devoted to an examination of the history of tribal sovereignty, the determining factor in both Oliphant and Wheeler .). 3 25 Using this methodology, the Court in Duro determined that Indian tribes lack criminal jurisdiction over nonmember Indians. While the Court was at times equivocal, 495 U.S. at 688-89 ([t]he historical record in this case . .. tends to support the conclusion we reach (emphasis added)), and even acknowledged that the historical record was not crystal clear, id. at 691 (Evidence on criminal jurisdiction over nonmembers is less clear, but on balance supports the view that inherent tribal jurisdiction extends to tribe members only.), it nonetheless concluded that the tribes did not possess criminal jurisdiction over nonmembers as part of their inherent authority. 26 Congress reacted swiftly. In 1990, the same year that Duro was decided, Congress enacted amendments to the Indian Civil Rights Act that were intended to override Duro. Prior to those amendments, the ICRA had defined tribal powers of self-government as 27 all governmental powers possessed by an Indian tribe, executive, legislative, and judicial, and all offices, bodies, and tribunals by and through which they are executed, including courts of Indian offenses. 28 25 U.S.C. §§ 1301(2) (1990). The 1990 amendments modified this definition to include 29 all governmental powers possessed by an Indian tribe, executive, legislative, and judicial, and all offices, bodies, and tribunals by and through which they are executed, including courts of Indian offenses; and means the inherent power of Indian tribes, hereby recognized and affirmed, to exercise criminal jurisdiction over all Indians. 30 25 U.S.C. §§ 1301(2) (2000) (emphasis added). 31 This statute was intended to override Duro in two separate ways. First, tribes would now have jurisdiction over nonmember Indians. This is clear from the last clause of the amendment, which defines powers of self-government  to include power over all Indians. Id. 32 Second, important for our purposes here, Congress intended to replace Duro's historical narrative--according to which the tribes had no power over nonmember Indians--with a different version of history that recognized such power to be inherent. Presumably for similar reasons, Congress also made clear that these amendments were not a congressional delegation of authority, but rather a recognition of power that always existed; in other words, inherent powers that were never . . . extinguished, Wheeler, 435 U.S. at 322. This intention is explicit in the statutory text, and permeates the legislative history. See, e.g., 137 Cong. Rec. H2988-02 (daily ed. May 14, 1991), 1991 WL 77806 (statement of Rep. Miller) ([T]his bill recognizes an inherent tribal right which always existed. It is not a delegation of authority but an affirmation that tribes retain all rights not expressly taken away.); H.R. Conf. Rep. No. 102-261, at 3 (1991), reprinted in 1991 U.S.C.C.A.N. 379, 379 (The Committee of Conference is clarifying an inherent right which tribal governments have always held and was never questioned until the recent Supreme Court decision of Duro v. Reina, 110 S. Ct. 2[0]53 (1990).); see also United States v. Weaselhead, 156 F.3d 818, 823 (8th Cir. 1998) (These post-Duro amendments reflect an attempt by Congress to rewrite the fundamental principles upon which Duro, Oliphant, and Wheeler were based by redefining the Indian tribes' `inherent' sovereign status as having always included criminal jurisdiction over non-member Indians.), vacated by an equally divided court, 165 F.3d 1209 (8th Cir. 1999) (en banc); Means, 154 F.3d at 950-51 (Reinhardt, J., concurring) (reviewing legislative history); Mousseaux v. United States Comm'r of Indian Affairs , 806 F. Supp. 1433, 1442-43 (D.S.D. 1992) (same). 33 In short, Duro squarely conflicts with the 1990 amendments to the ICRA. The Supreme Court said that Indian tribes did not have inherent criminal jurisdiction over nonmember Indians; Congress said that they did. See Weaselhead, 156 F.3d at 823 ([W]e are presented with a legislative enactment purporting to recast history in a manner that alters the Supreme Court's stated understanding of the organizing principles by which the Indian tribes were incorporated into our constitutional system of government.). Thus, the critical question in this case is whether Congress had the power to enact its vision of tribal sovereignty, one that was at odds with the Supreme Court's historical narrative. Cf. Philip S. Deloria & Nell Jessup Newton, Federal Criminal Jurisdiction of Tribal Courts over Non-Member Indians, 38 Fed. B. News & J. 70, 73 (Mar. 1991) (The [1990 amendments ] raise[ ] complex and subtle issues of constitutional law, especially relating to separation of powers.). Here the notion of revisionist history takes on legal consequences. For the reasons that follow, we conclude that in this narrow context, Congress did have this power. 34 With that in mind, we pause to note the relationship between our reasoning and that of the concurrence. In reaching our conclusion about Congress' power, we arrive at the same ultimate result as the concurrence, albeit by a different route. We both agree that Congress has the authority to identify the parameters of tribal sovereignty. The concurrence concludes, however, that a separation of powers analysis is unnecessary because Congress (in the 1990 amendments) and the Supreme Court (in Duro) are not necessarily in conflict over the scope of tribal sovereignty. The historical record is of no import here, it contends, because Congress could recognize and confirm inherent tribal power for the first time in the 1990 amendments, and the tribes would still be exercising their own `inherent' sovereign power, rather than`delegated' federal power.'  Concurrence at 16 n.8. 35 But this analysis collapses the distinction between inherent and delegated power. The concurrence would hold that a power never previously possessed by a tribe--not in 1787, not at the time of the tribe's conquest, not at the time the tribe was first recognized by the federal government, and not today--could be bestowed upon the tribe tomorrow by Congress and still be termed inherent. If a power first created tomorrow can be designated as inherent, then what power would ever be delegated? Put simply, none. Under Duro and Wheeler, this cannot be correct. 4 Although the line between inherent and delegated powers is a fuzzy one, and at times seems to collapse, we are nonetheless required by Supreme Court precedent to recognize this line; to implement the historical inquiry described above; and, as a result, to consider the respective powers of Congress and the courts with regard to this dispute. 36