Opinion ID: 513966
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Disregard of Supreme Court Authority

Text: 8 The panel laments the lack of Supreme Court guidance on the question before it and is perplexed by the [ ] ambiguities in the historical record. 851 F.2d at 1142. The panel's perplexity grows out of its failure to consider or discuss the Supreme Court cases most directly on point, its insistence on labelling relevant statements in other Supreme Court cases as dicta and its reluctance to accept the guidance clearly offered in the Supreme Court cases on which it does rely. The fact of the matter is that the Supreme Court has charted a clear course through these waters, a course that the Eighth Circuit had no difficulty following. Greywater v. Joshua, 846 F.2d 486 (8th Cir.1988). 9 The course starts with Oliphant v. Suquamish Indian Tribe, 435 U.S. 191, 98 S.Ct. 1011, 55 L.Ed.2d 209 (1978), where the Court held that tribes could not exercise criminal jurisdiction over non-Indians. 1 Standing alone, Oliphant leaves open the possibility that tribal courts might exercise criminal jurisdiction over Indians who are not members of the forum tribe. A series of subsequent decisions have elaborated on Oliphant, however, effectively foreclosing this possibility. 10 Only two weeks after Oliphant the Court decided United States v. Wheeler, 435 U.S. 313, 98 S.Ct. 1079, 55 L.Ed.2d 303 (1978). Wheeler raised the question whether the defendant (a member of the Navajo tribe) could be tried in federal court after the Navajo tribal court had convicted him for the same conduct. To resolve this question, the Supreme Court had to examine the source of the tribe's authority over Wheeler. 2 The Court concluded that the jurisdiction derived from the tribe's retained authority, i.e., that aspect of the tribe's sovereignty it had not given up by virtue of incorporation into the United States. In reaching this conclusion, the Court drew a sharp distinction between those sovereign powers the tribe had surrendered and those it had not: 11 The areas in which such implicit divestiture of sovereignty has been held to have occurred are those involving the relations between an Indian tribe and nonmembers of the tribe .... But the powers of self-government, including the power to prescribe and enforce internal criminal laws, are of a different type. They involve only the relations among members of a tribe. Thus, they are not such powers as would necessarily be lost by virtue of a tribe's dependent status. 12 Id. at 326, 98 S.Ct. at 1087 (emphasis added). Speaking precisely to the issue presented in our case, the Court stated: And, as we have recently held, [the tribes] cannot try nonmembers in tribal courts. Id. (citing Oliphant, 435 U.S. at 191, 98 S.Ct. at 1011). 13 Admittedly, this last statement in Wheeler is dictum. But it is dictum of a most unusual and persuasive sort: It is the Supreme Court's characterization of its holding in a case it had decided only two weeks earlier. More important, when cited by the Court in support of its analysis in Wheeler, it is the only characterization of Oliphant that makes sense. As the Eighth Circuit recognized, [t]he Wheeler Court's analysis distinguishing nonmember Indians from tribal members was not inadvertent. Its very analysis requires such distinction. Greywater, 846 F.2d at 491. If the tribe's criminal jurisdiction is derived from its power to control relations among its own members, that power cannot extend to anyone who is not a member of the tribe. The result reached by the panel in our case simply cannot be squared with Oliphant and Wheeler. 3 14 But Oliphant and Wheeler were only the first manifestations of the Court's emerging theory limiting tribal jurisdiction to members of the tribe. In Washington v. Confederated Tribes of the Colville Indian Reservation, 447 U.S. 134, 100 S.Ct. 2069, 65 L.Ed.2d 10 (1980), the Court considered whether a state could impose various state taxes on cigarettes and other items sold by tribal enterprises on the reservation. The Court held that the state could properly tax sales to nonmembers of the tribe, but not sales to members. Most important, the Court addressed the issue--crucial in our case--of the status of the Indians who were not members of the tribe in question: 15 [T]he mere fact that nonmembers resident on the reservation come within the definition of Indian for purposes of the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, 48 Stat. 988, 25 U.S.C. Sec. 479, does not demonstrate a congressional intent to exempt such Indians from state taxation. 16 Nor would the imposition of Washington's tax on these purchasers contravene the principle of tribal self-government, for the simple reason that nonmembers are not constituents of the governing Tribe. For most practical purposes those Indians stand on the same footing as non-Indians resident on the reservation. There is no evidence that nonmembers have a say in tribal affairs or significantly share in tribal disbursements. 17 Id. at 161 100 S.Ct. at 2085 (emphasis added); see also id. at 187, 100 S.Ct. at 2098 (Rehnquist, J., concurring in part) ([t]he fact that the nonmember resident happens to be an Indian by race provides no basis for distinction. The traditional immunity is not based on race, but accouterments of self-government in which a nonmember does not share). Although the Court was discussing a tribe's immunity from taxation, not its criminal jurisdiction, the Court was clearly drawing on a broader theory of tribal sovereignty: A tribe acts as a sovereign only with respect to its own members. 18 The panel disregards Colville, just as it disregards Montana v. United States, 450 U.S. 544, 101 S.Ct. 1245, 67 L.Ed.2d 493 (1981), where the Court provided its most explicit statement yet as to the boundaries of tribal sovereignty. Montana draws a clear distinction between a tribe's power over its own members and its power over nonmembers. At issue was whether a tribe could prohibit hunting and fishing by nonmembers on reservation land not owned by the tribe. Applying the principles announced in Wheeler, the Court concluded that the tribe could not prohibit such activities: 19 Thus, in addition to the power to punish tribal offenders, the Indian tribes retain their inherent power to determine tribal membership, to regulate domestic relations among members, and to prescribe rules of inheritance for members. But exercise of tribal power beyond what is necessary to protect tribal self-government or to control internal relations is inconsistent with the dependent status of the tribes, and so cannot survive without express congressional delegation. 20 Id. at 564, 101 S.Ct. at 1257 (emphasis added; citations omitted). Significantly, the Court viewed its conclusion as flowing from the rationale of Oliphant: Though Oliphant only determined inherent tribal authority in criminal matters, the principles on which it relied support the general proposition that the inherent sovereign powers of an Indian tribe do not extend to the activities of nonmembers of the tribe. Id. at 565, 101 S.Ct. at 1258 (emphasis added; footnote omitted). The exercise of criminal jurisdiction is plainly an inherent sovereign power. 21 As the Eighth Circuit recognized, in seeking guidance from the Supreme Court, we must do more than look at words and phrases; we must analyze concepts and principles. A sister circuit has done so and come to the conclusion that tribal courts may not assert criminal jurisdiction over Indians who are not members of the tribe. Greywater draws a map of the Supreme Court law on this subject, carefully highlighting all the significant landmarks. If we interpret the map differently, if we read the Supreme Court cases as charting another course, so be it. But we then have a responsibility to explain our reasoning. Dismissing some Supreme Court cases which our sister circuit found dispositive as casual references deserving little weight, 851 F.2d at 1141, while overlooking others altogether, is inappropriate. 4