Cite as: 530 U. S. 392 (2000)
Syllabus
else) in the dark until its late awakening. Nothing in Arizona II supports the State parties' assertion that the Court expressly recognized the possibility that future Fort Yuma boundary lands claims might be precluded. 460 U. S., at 638, distinguished. Of large significance, this Court's 1979 and 1984 supplemental decrees anticipated that the disputed boundary issues for all five reservations, including Fort Yuma, would be "finally determined" in some forum, not by preclusion but on the merits. The State parties themselves stipulated to the terms of the 1979 supplemental decree and appear to have litigated the Arizona II proceedings on the understanding that the boundary disputes should be resolved on the merits, see, e. g., id., at 634. Finally, the Court rejects the State parties' argument that this Court should now raise the preclusion question sua sponte. The special circumstances in which such judicial initiative might be appropriate are not present here. See United States v. Sioux Nation, 448 U. S. 371, 432 (Rehnquist, J., dissenting). Pp. 406-413.
2. The claims of the United States and the Tribe to increased water rights for the disputed boundary lands of the Fort Yuma Reservation are not precluded by the consent judgment in Docket No. 320. The Special Master agreed with the State parties' assertion to the contrary. He concluded that, because the settlement extinguished the Tribe's claim to title in the disputed lands, the United States and the Tribe cannot seek additional water rights based on the Tribe's purported beneficial ownership of those lands. Under standard preclusion doctrine, the Master's recommendation cannot be sustained. As between the Tribe and the United States, the settlement indeed had, and was intended to have, claim-preclusive effect. But settlements ordinarily lack issue-preclusive effect. This differentiation is grounded in basic res judicata doctrine. The general rule is that issue preclusion attaches only when an issue is actually litigated and determined by a valid and final judgment. See United States v. International Building Co., 345 U. S. 502, 505-506. The State parties assert that common-law principles of issue preclusion do not apply in the special context of Indian land claims. They maintain that the Indian Claims Commission Act created a special regime of statutory preclusion. This Court need not decide whether some consent judgments in that distinctive context might bar a tribe from asserting title even in discrete litigation against third parties, for the 1983 settlement of Docket No. 320 plainly could not qualify as such a judgment. Not only was the issue of ownership of the disputed boundary lands not actually litigated and decided in Docket No. 320, but, most notably, the Tribe proceeded on alternative and mutually exclusive theories of recovery, taking and trespass. The consent judgment embraced all of the Tribe's claims with no election by the Tribe of one
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