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Rh removal treaties); The Kansas Indians, 5 Wall. 737 (1867) (States cannot tax Indian lands)). It does not follow from those cases that the Federal Government has any additional authority with regard to Indians—much less a sweeping, unbounded authority over all matters relating to Indians. Cf. Worcester, 6 Pet., at 547 (suggesting that tribes had long been left to regulate their internal affairs). At each step, Kagama thus lacked any constitutional basis.

Nonetheless, in the years after Kagama, this Court started referring to a “plenary power” or “plenary authority” that Congress possessed over Indian tribes, as well as a trust relationship with the Indians. See, e.g., Stephens v. Cherokee Nation, 174 U. S. 445, 478 (1899); Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock, 187 U. S. 553, 565 (1903); Winton v. Amos, 255 U. S. 373, 391 (1921). And, in the decades since, this Court has increasingly gestured to such a plenary power, usually in the context of regulating a tribal government or tribal lands, while conspicuously failing to ground the power in any constitutional text and cautioning that the power is not absolute. See, e.g., (noting this problem); United States v. Alcea Band of Tillamooks, 329 U. S. 40, 54 (1946) (opinion of Vinson, C. J.); Santa Clara Pueblo v. Martinez, 436 U. S. 49, 56–57 (1978).

The majority’s opinion today continues in that vein—only confirming its lack of any constitutional basis. Like so many cases before it, the majority’s opinion lurches from one constitutional hook to another, not quite hanging the idea of a plenary power on any of them, while insisting that the plenary power is not absolute. See. While I empathize with the majority regarding the confusion that Kagama and its progeny have engendered, I cannot reflexively reaffirm a power that remains in search of a constitutional basis. And, while the majority points to a few actual constitutional provisions, like the Commerce and Treaty Clauses, those provisions cannot bear the weight that our cases have placed upon them.