Cite as: 533 U. S. 353 (2001)
Opinion of the Court
While it is not entirely clear from our precedent whether the last mentioned authority entails the corollary right to enter a reservation (including Indian-fee lands) for enforcement purposes, several of our opinions point in that direction. In Confederated Tribes, we explicitly reserved the question whether state officials could seize cigarettes held for sale to nonmembers in order to recover the taxes due. See 447 U. S., at 162. In Utah & Northern R. Co., however, we observed that "[i]t has . . . been held that process of [state] courts may run into an Indian reservation of this kind, where the subject-matter or controversy is otherwise within their cognizance," 116 U. S., at 31.5 Shortly thereafter, we considered, in United States v. Kagama, 118 U. S. 375 (1886), whether Congress could enact a law giving federal courts jurisdiction over various common-law, violent crimes committed by Indians on a reservation within a State. We expressed skepticism that the Indian Commerce Clause could justify this assertion of authority in derogation of state jurisdiction, but ultimately accepted the argument that the law
"does not interfere with the process of the State courts within the reservation, nor with the operation of State laws upon white people found there. Its effect is confined to the acts of an Indian of some tribe, of a criminal character, committed within the limits of the reservation.
"It seems to us that this is within the competency of Congress." Id., at 383.
The Court's references to "process" in Utah & Northern R. Co. and Kagama, and the Court's concern in Kagama over possible federal encroachment on state prerogatives, sug-5 Though Utah & Northern R. Co. did not state what it meant by a "reservation of this kind," the context makes clear that it meant a reservation not excluded from the territory of a State by treaty. See, e. g., Harkness v. Hyde, 98 U. S. 476, 478 (1879); The Kansas Indians, 5 Wall. 737, 739-741 (1867).
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