Opinion ID: 773865
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: tribal sovereignty, inherent power, and delegation

Text: 12 Indian tribes pose special concerns in the context of double jeopardy. The difficulty arises because Indian tribes exercise multiple forms of power, stemming from different sources, that have different implications for double jeopardy. On the one hand, the tribes are autonomous sovereigns. As such, they retain all power that is not inconsistent with their status as conquered and dependent nations. Oliphant v. Suquamish Indian Tribe, 435 U.S. 191, 196 (1978). This form of authority, described as inherent, Wheeler, 435 U.S. at 323, or retained, id. at 327; Duro, 495 U.S. at 679, comprises the power needed to control [the tribes'] own internal relations, and to preserve their own unique customs and social order, Duro, 495 U.S. at 685-86. 13 On the other hand, tribal autonomy is not sovereignty in the ordinary sense. It exists only at the sufferance of Congress and is subject to complete defeasance. Wheeler, 435 U.S. at 323. Congress can limit tribal power and, conversely, can add to it. When Congress bestows additional power upon a tribe--augments its sovereignty, one might say--this additional grant of power is referred to as delegation. Duro, 495 U.S. at 687; Wheeler, 435 U.S. at 328; Oliphant, 435 U.S. at 208. 14 This dichotomy between inherent and delegated power has important implications for double jeopardy. When a tribe exercises inherent power, it flexes its own sovereign muscle, and the dual sovereignty exception to double jeopardy permits federal and tribal prosecutions for the same crime. By contrast, when a tribe exercises power delegated to it by Congress, the Double Jeopardy Clause prohibits duplicative tribal and federal prosecutions. The Supreme Court has been consistent in maintaining the distinction between inherent and delegated power, and in holding that these two forms of power have different consequences for double jeopardy. Thus, in Wheeler, the Court considered dual sovereignty double jeopardy in the context of a tribe's criminal prosecution of a tribal member. In so doing, it described the question before it as follows: 15 [The tribe's] right of internal self-government includes the right to prescribe laws applicable to tribe members and to enforce those laws by criminal sanctions. . . . [T]he controlling question in this case is the source of this power to punish tribal offenders: Is it a part of inherent tribal sovereignty, or an aspect of the sovereignty of the Federal Government which has been delegated to the tribes by Congress? 16 435 U.S. at 322 (internal citations omitted). Inherent power would permit the dual prosecutions; delegated power would not. The Court drove the point home later in Wheeler: 17 In sum, the power to punish offenses against tribal law committed by Tribe members, which was part of the Navajos' primeval sovereignty, has never been taken away from them, either explicitly or implicitly, and is attributable in no way to any delegation to them of federal authority. It follows that when the Navajo Tribe exercises this power, it does so as part of its retained sovereignty and not as an arm of the Federal Government. 18 Id. at 328 (footnotes omitted). Indeed, the Court in Duro described Wheeler as drawing precisely this distinction: 19 Had the prosecution [in Wheeler] been a manifestation of external relations between the Tribe and outsiders, such power would have been inconsistent with the Tribe's dependent status, and could only have come to the Tribe by delegation from Congress, subject to the constraints of the Constitution. 20 Duro, 495 U.S. at 686; see also Nell Jessup Newton, Permanent Legislation To Correct Duro v. Reina, 17 Am. Indian L. Rev. 109, 112 (1992) (Everyone assumes Congress could have created new law by delegating federal power to tribes to try nonmember Indians. . . . [But] if the delegatee has no power in a particular area, the delegatee exercises the power of the person doing the delegation.); cf. Felix S. Cohen, Handbook of Federal Indian Law 231 (1982 ed.) (Perhaps the most basic principle of all Indian law . . . is that those powers which are lawfully vested in an Indian tribe are not, in general, delegated powers granted by express acts of Congress, but rather `inherent powers of a limited sovereignty which has never been extinguished.'  (emphasis added) (quoting Wheeler, 435 U.S. at 322-23)). 21 Thus, the question before us here is whether the White Mountain Apache Tribe prosecuted Michael Enas pursuant to its inherent sovereign power, or instead pursuant to power delegated to it by Congress. If it exercised inherent power, the federal prosecution can go forward; if it employed delegated power, the federal prosecution is barred. The answer to this question lies in Duro, and the 1990 amendments to the Indian Civil Rights Act (ICRA) that sought to address that decision.