U.S. v. Lara:

The most exciting passage in the opinion Eugene blogs below is, as far as I’m concerned, in Thomas’ concurrence.

“I cannot agree that the Indian Commerce Clause “provide[s] Congress with plenary power to legislate in the field of Indian affairs.” At one time, the implausibility of this assertion at least troubled the Court, see, e.g., U.S. v. Kagama (considering such a construction of the Indian Commerce Clause to be “very strained”) and I would be willing to revisit the question. [citations omitted]

Souter, in a separate dissent, criticizes Thomas for being willing to ignore on-topic Indian law rpecedents. But the precedent on this question is a mess, and I think Thomas is exactly right to see the problem created by a body of law that simultaneously grants Congress unlimited legislative power over every aspect of tribal life and considers tribes to be sovereign bodies. As far as the absurdity of inferring plenary power from the Indian Commerce Clause (especially in light of the Lopez restoration of the meaning of the Interstate Commerce Clause), I was working on notes toward a paper on the problem just this morning. I expected my view to come across as kind of a crank’s view, requiring as it does overturning more than a hundred years of precedent interpreting the Indian Commerce Clause. It might still come across as a crank’s view, but now the crank keeps company with one lonely Supreme Court justice.