Court Opinion

ID: 9425458
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:14:46.165145+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:55.672159
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice White,
with whom The Chief Justice and Mr. Justice Stewart join, concurring.
I agree that, consistently with the Treaty, commercial fishing by Indians cannot be totally forbidden in order to permit sports fishing in the usual volume. On the other hand, the Treaty does not obligate the State of Washington to subsidize the Indian fishery with planted fish paid for by sports fishermen. The opinion below, as I understand it, indicates that the river, left to its own devices, would have an annual run of 5,000 or 6,000 steel-head. It is only to this run that Indian Treaty rights *50extend. Moreover, if there were no sports fishing and no state-planted steelhead, and if the State, as the Court said it could when this case was here before, may restrict commercial fishing in the interest of conservation, the Indian fishery cannot take so many fish that the natural run would suffer progressive depletion. Because the Court’s opinion appears to leave room for this approach and for substantial, but fair, limits on the Indian commercial fishery, I am content to concur.