Page:Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians v. Coughlin.pdf/28

Rh phrase “other foreign or domestic government,” read as a whole, could mean “any and every government”—respondent’s backup argument and the one the Court adopts today. Neither possibility is the slam dunk our familiar clear-statement rule requires. Consider each in turn.

Start with the “domestic government” possibility. At the time Congress adopted the provisions of the Bankruptcy Code at issue before us, the word “domestic” carried only two potentially relevant meanings. It could mean spatially domestic—i.e., within the territorial confines of the United States. Or it could mean politically domestic—i.e., a subpart of the United States. Contemporary definitions support each of those possibilities and only those possibilities. See, e.g., Random House Dictionary of the English Language 581 (2d ed. 1987) (“of or pertaining to one’s own or a particular country as apart from other countries”); American Heritage Dictionary 416 (2d College ed. 1982) (“[o]f or pertaining to a country’s internal affairs”).

If we were to read the term only in its spatial sense, as the First Circuit did below and respondent urges us to do, it makes some sense to speak of Tribes as “domestic.” See In re Coughlin, 33 F. 4th 600, 606 (2022). These days, tribal jurisdiction usually falls within the United States’ territorial bounds—although that was not true for most of the Nation’s history, and became so only after the West was won. M. Fletcher, Tribal Consent, 8 Stan. J. Civ. Rights & Civ. Lib. 45, 55, n. 63 (2012). Of course, usually does not mean always. Even to this day, all three branches of government struggle to address the status of Tribes that straddle our Nation’s borders. See, e.g., 8 U. S. C. §1359 (setting special immigration rules for “American Indians born in Canada”); 22 CFR §42.1(f) (2022) (similar); Matter of Yellowquill, 16 I. & N. Dec. 576, 577–578 (BIA 1978) (interpreting other