Court Opinion

ID: 9491530
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 14:16:33.04912+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:54:47.824879
License: Public Domain

MORRIS SHEPPARD ARNOLD, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
As I understand it, the court is of the opinion that the determination of what sovereign powers Indian tribes inherently possess is somehow “ultimately entrusted to the [Su*825preme] Court and thus beyond the scope of Congress’s authority to alter retroactively by legislative fiat.” I respectfully disagree and cannot locate any such legal principle in the relevant cases or in the Constitution.
The court’s reference to “the position of Indian tribes within our constitutional structure of government” would seem to indicate that it believes that inherent Indian sovereignty is defined by the Constitution, as would the court’s reliance on Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. (1 Cranch) 137, 177, 2 L.Ed. 60 (1803). Indeed, it would be difficult to understand how Congress could have no power over determining the perimeters of inherent tribal sovereignty unless the matter had some constitutional basis. But that is not the case.
Chief Justice Marshall, in Cherokee Nation v. Georgia, 30 U.S. (5 Peters) 1, 16-19, 8 L.Ed. 25 (1831), suggested that the question of whether an Indian tribe was a state was to be determined by reference to the uniform custom of nations and, more important, by reference to the history of our country’s dealings with various Indian tribes. Indian tribes, he wrote, “have been uniformly treated as a state, from the settlement of our country.... The acts of our government plainly recognise the Cherokee nation as a state, and the courts are bound by those acts.” Id. at 16. Chief Justice Marshall made no intimation that the Constitution had anything to say on the question of whether Indian tribes are states. The Constitution is simply silent on the matter and on the related question of inherent Indian sovereignty. These are matters that are to be decided by reference to governmental custom and practice and to the general principles of the jus gentium.
In other words, the question of what powers Indian tribes inherently possess, as the district court recognized, has always been a matter of federal common law. As a recent law review article noted, “Oliphant and Duro were not constitutional decisions; they were founded instead on federal common law.” See L. Scott Gould, The Consent Paradigm: Tribal Sovereignty at the Millennium, 96 Colum. L. Rev. 809, 853 (1996). That being the case, Congress has the power to expand and contract the inherent sovereignty that Indian tribes possess because it has legislative authority over federal common law.
The tribal court in this case thus proceeded under an inherent sovereignty, not under one that Congress delegated, in exercising jurisdiction over Mr. Weaselhead, and the doctrine of double jeopardy would therefore not bar a further prosecution of him by the federal government.
I therefore respectfully dissent and would affirm the district court on the basis of its well-reasoned opinion.