Page:Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians v. Coughlin.pdf/25

2 of those things. Instead, the Constitution’s text—and two centuries of history and precedent—establish that Tribes enjoy a unique status in our law. Because this reading of the statute is itself (at worst) a plausible one, I would hold that the Bankruptcy Code flunks this Court’s clear-statement rule and reverse.

As the Court reaffirms today, “the doctrine of tribal immunity is settled law.” Kiowa Tribe of Okla. v. Manufacturing Technologies, Inc., 523 U. S. 751, 756 (1998); see. Nor should that fact come as a surprise. From the founding to the present, this Court has recognized the Tribes’ continued existence as “independent sovereigns.” Haaland v. Brackeen, 599 U. S. ___, ___–___ (2023) (, concurring) (slip op., at 12–18); see, e.g., United States v. Wheeler, 435 U. S. 313, 322 (1978); Worcester v. Georgia, 6 Pet. 515, 559 (1832) (Marshall, C. J., for the Court).

A “necessary corollary to [that] Indian sovereignty” is immunity from private suit. Three Affiliated Tribes of Fort Berthold Reservation v. Wold Engineering, P. C., 476 U. S. 877, 890 (1986). It is, after all, “inherent in the nature of sovereignty not to be amenable to the suit of an individual without its consent.” The Federalist No. 81, p. 487 (C. Rossiter ed. 1961) (A. Hamilton). That understanding, derived from both “common law sovereign immunity” and “law-of-nations sovereign immunity,” is a background principle on which the Constitution itself rests. See Franchise Tax Bd. of Cal. v. Hyatt, 587 U. S. ___, ___–___ (2019) (slip op., at 6–9) (internal quotation marks omitted) (citing authorities). And it applies to Tribes no less than foreign nations, Santa Clara Pueblo v. Martinez, 436 U. S. 49, 58 (1978), a tradition that traces back over 170 years, see Parks v. Ross, 11 How. 362, 374 (1851). See also W. Wood, It Wasn’t an Accident: The Tribal Sovereign Immunity Story, 62 Am.