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Rh now weak.” Kagama, 118 U. S., at 384–385. Of course, nothing of the sort follows from “a reasoned analysis derived from the text [or] history … of the United States Constitution.” Clinton 2002, at 163. Instead, the plenary-power idea “constituted an unprincipled assertion of raw federal authority.” Ibid. It rested on nothing more than judicial claims about putative constitutional purposes that aligned with contemporary policy preferences.

Nor was anachronistic language the only consequence of this Court’s abandonment of the Constitution’s original meaning. During what has been called the “high plenary power era of U. S. Indian law,” this Court sometimes took the word “plenary” pretty literally. S. Cleveland, Powers Inherent in Sovereignty: Indians, Aliens, Territories, and the Nineteenth Century Origins of Plenary Power Over Foreign Affairs, 81 Texas L. Rev. 1, 62 (2002) (Cleveland). It assumed that Congress possesses a “virtually unlimited authority to regulate [T]ribes” in every respect. M. Steele, Plenary Power, Political Questions, and Sovereignty in Indian Affairs, 63 UCLA L. Rev. 666, 670 (2016); see Cleveland 62–74. Perhaps most notably, the Court even suggested that Congress’s “plenary authority” might allow it to “limit, modify, or eliminate the powers of local self-government which the [T]ribes otherwise possess.” Santa Clara Pueblo v. Martinez, 436 U. S. 49, 56–57 (1978). It is an “inconceivable” suggestion for anyone who takes the Constitution’s original meaning seriously. Worcester, 6 Pet., at 554.

The Court’s atextual and ahistorical plenary-power move did not just serve to expand the scope of federal power over the Tribes. It also had predictable downstream effects on the relationship between States and Tribes. As Congress assumed new power to intrude on tribal sovereignty, the Constitution’s “concomitant jurisdictional limit on the reach of state law” began to wane. McClanahan, 411 U. S., at 171. It is not hard to draw a through-line between these