Tribal Law

Tribal sovereignty in the United States is the inherent authority of indigenous tribes to govern themselves within the borders of the United States of America. The U.S. federal government recognizes tribal nations as "domestic dependent nations" and has established a number of laws attempting to clarify the relationship between the federal, state, and tribal governments.

It may be noted that while Native American tribal sovereignty is partially limited as "domestic dependent nations," so too is the sovereignty of the federal government and the individual states – each of which is limited by the other. The will of the people underlies the sovereignty of both the U.S. federal government and the states, but neither sovereignty is absolute and each operates within a system of dual sovereignty. According to the reservation clause of the Tenth Amendment, the federal state possesses only those powers delegated to it by the Constitution (expressly or implicitly), while all other powers are reserved to the individual states or to the people. For example, the individual states hold full police powers. On the other hand, the individual states, like the Indian tribes, cannot print currency or conduct foreign affairs, or exercise other powers assigned by the Constitution to the federal state. Viewed in this light, tribal sovereignty is a form of parallel sovereignty within the U.S. constitutional framework, constrained by but not subordinate to other sovereign entities.

The United States Constitution mentions Native American tribes three times:

These basic provisions have been changed or clarified by various federal laws over the history of the United States. Regulate, historically means facilitate. Therefore, the Congress of these United States was to be the facilitator of commerce between the states and the tribes.

These Constitutional provisions, and subsequent interpretations by the Supreme Court (see below) are today often summarized in three principles of U.S. Indian law:

The Marshall Trilogy is a set of three Supreme Court decisions in the early nineteenth century affirming the legal and political standing of Indian nations.

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