For the past 180 years, the inherent power of indigenous tribes to govern themselves has been a central tenet of federal Indian law. Despite the U.S. Supreme Court s repeated confirmation of Native sovereignty since the early 1830s, it has, in the past half-century, incrementally curtailed the power of tribes to govern non-Indians on Indian reservations. The result, Dewi Ioan Ball argues, has been a silent revolution, mounted by particular justices so gradually and quietly that the significance of the Court s rulings has largely evaded public scrutiny.
Ball begins his examination of...