Montana v. United States’s Empirical Analysis
1981
Citation profile
627 federal appellate · 306 district · 393 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 1,954 later decisions (92 by the Supreme Court) — most recently December 2025 · most notably Block v. North Dakota Board of University and School Lands North Dakota Board of University and School Lands (1983), National Farmers Union Insurance Companies 27 v. Crow Tribe of Indians (1985)
627 federal appellate · 306 district · 393 state decisions — followed in 26 states
Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.
Appellate journey
reviewedUnited States v. State of Montana (from Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on United States v. Wheeler · Williams v. Lee · McClanahan v. State Tax Commission of Arizona · United States v. Kagama
Cited together with Iowa Mutual Insurance v. LaPlante · Santa Clara Pueblo v. Martinez · National Farmers Union Insurance Companies 27 v. Crow Tribe of Indians · United States v. Wheeler · Williams v. Lee
Most-quoted passages
The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 1,954 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“To be sure, Indian tribes retain inherent sovereign power to exercise some forms of civil jurisdiction over non-Indians on their reservations, even on non-Indian fee lands. A tribe may regulate, through taxation, licensing, or other means, the activities of nonmembers who enter consensual relationships with the tribe or its members, through commercial dealing, contracts, leases, or other arrangements. A tribe may also retain inherent power to exercise civil authority over the conduct of non-Indians on fee lands within its reservation when that conduct threatens or has some direct effect on the political integrity, the economic security, or the health or welfare of the tribe.”
158 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“exercise of tribal power beyond what is necessary to protect tribal self-government or to control internal relations is inconsistent with the dependent status of the tribes, and so cannot survive without express congressional delegation.”
38 later decisions quote this exact passage“the Indian tribes retain their inherent power to determine tribal membership, to regulate domestic relations among members, and to prescribe rules of inheritance for members”
20 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.