25 U.S.C. § 3631
Section 3631 · Tribal authority
Amended 1 time on record
Applied in 2 court decisions — leading case Adams v. COM'N ON APPELLATE CT. APPOINTMENTS (2011)
Most recently applied in Adams v. COM'N ON APPELLATE CT. APPOINTMENTS (July 2011)
How often courts cite this section
Court decisions citing this, by year.Markers show enactment, consequential amendments, and circuit splits over this section — watch for a citation surge after a change or a disagreement. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.
Nothing in this chapter shall be construed to—
(1) encroach upon or diminish in any way the inherent sovereign authority of each tribal government to determine the role of the tribal justice system within the tribal government or to enact and enforce tribal laws;
(2) diminish in any way the authority of tribal governments to appoint personnel;
(3) impair the rights of each tribal government to determine the nature of its own legal system or the appointment of authority within the tribal government;
(4) alter in any way any tribal traditional dispute resolution forum;
(5) imply that any tribal justice system is an instrumentality of the United States; or
(6) diminish the trust responsibility of the United States to Indian tribal governments and tribal justice systems of such governments.