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2 invocation of the Indian “trust relationship.”

At the outset, it should be noted that our precedents’ “trust” language can be understood in two different ways. In one sense, the term “trust” could refer merely to the trust that Indians have placed in the Federal Government. If that is all this language means, then I have no objection. Many citizens (and foreign nations) trust the Federal Government to do the right thing. Determining how to do right by the competing interests of the country’s millions of citizens, however, is generally a job for the political branches, not courts.

By contrast, the term “trust” also has a well-understood meaning at law: a relationship in which a trustee has legally enforceable duties to manage a discrete trust corpus for certain beneficiaries. See Restatement (Third) of Trusts §2 (2001). At times, the Federal Government has expressly created such discrete legal trusts for Indians—by, for example, placing parcels of land or specified sums of money into trust. See, e.g., Cass County v. Leech Lake Band of Chippewa Indians, 524 U. S. 103, 106–107, 114 (1998) (describing statutory grants of authority to place lands in trust for Indians); Seminole Nation, 316 U. S., at 293–294 (describing “the Government’s promise” in a particular treaty “to establish a $500,000 trust fund” for the Seminole Nation). But, when resolving disputes about those trusts, the Court’s “trust” language has gone beyond the discrete terms of those trusts; for example, the Court has alluded generally to “the distinctive obligation of trust incumbent upon the Government in its dealings” with Indians and the Government’s “moral obligations of the highest responsibility and trust.” Id., at 296–297. In those and other cases, the Court has accordingly blurred the lines between the political branches’ general moral obligations to Indians, on the one hand, and specific fiduciary obligations of the Federal Government that might be enforceable in court, on the other. See, e.g., Mitchell, 463 U. S., at 225; Seminole Nation, 316