United States v. Lara

| ^This case concerns a congressional statute “recogniz[ing] and affirm[ing]” the “inherent” authority of a tribe to bring a criminal misdemeanor prosecution against an Indian who is not a member of that tribe—authority that this Court previously held a tribe did not possess. Compare 25 U.S.C. § 1301(2) with Duro v. Reina, 495 U.S. 676, 110 S.Ct. 2053, 109 L.Ed.2d 693 (1990). We must decide whether Congress has the constitutional power to relax restrictions that the political branches have, over time, placed on the exercise of a tribe’s inherent legal authority. We conclude that Congress does…