Cases you should know about ...

This is the first entry in an occasional series, "Cases you should know about," that I'll be adding to my blog.

NAME: Oliphant v. Suquamish Indian Tribe, 435 U.S. 191 (1978)

FACTS: A non-Indian was arrested by tribal authorities and charged with multiple criminal counts. After his release, he petitioned the tribe did not have jurisdiction over him because he was not Indian. District Court and the Court of Appeals denied his petition, and the case went to the U.S. Supreme Court. The tribe operates by it's own Law and Order Code, extending criminal jurisdiction to non-Indians, and it assumed, as a "quasi-sovereign entity" of the United States, it had inherent power to rule in this case. Also, in some cases, tribes have had jurisdiction over non-Indians.

ISSUE: Do Indian tribal courts have inherent jurisdiction to try and punish non-Indians in criminal cases?

RULE: No; the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the decision reached by the District Court and Court of Appeals, to rule that Indian tribes do not have inherent jurisdiction to try and punish non-Indians.

RATIONALE: Because this was not yet a law, the Supreme Court looked for patterns indicating Congress' intent on the matter. It reviewed an instance where a tribe had authority to rule in non-Indian criminal cases (1830 Treaty with the Choctaw Indian Tribe), and even then, it was only able to with Congress' authority. It also reviewed a 1960 Senate Report that gave the federal government more weight than tribal courts. It also noted that many tribes modeled their courts after the Executive Branch and legislation passed by Congress. In short, the Supreme Court reached its decision because it sees the United States as having "overriding sovereignty," and thus, more weight to rule.