Cite as: 533 U. S. 353 (2001)
Souter, J., concurring
of the United States jurisdiction of all actions to which its own citizens are parties on either side." And, in fact, to this very day, general federal law prohibits Courts of Indian Offenses (tribunals established by regulation for tribes that have not organized their own tribal court systems) from exercising jurisdiction over unconsenting nonmembers. Such courts have "[c]ivil jurisdiction" only of those actions arising within their territory "in which the defendant is an Indian, and of all other suits between Indians and non-Indians which are brought before the court by stipulation of the parties." 25 CFR § 11.103(a) (2000).
A rule generally prohibiting tribal courts from exercising civil jurisdiction over nonmembers, without looking first to the status of the land on which individual claims arise, also makes sense from a practical standpoint, for tying tribes' authority to land status in the first instance would produce an unstable jurisdictional crazy quilt. Because land on Indian reservations constantly changes hands (from tribes to nonmembers, from nonmembers to tribal members, and so on), a jurisdictional rule under which land status was dispositive would prove extraordinarily difficult to administer and would provide little notice to nonmembers, whose susceptibility to tribal-court jurisdiction would turn on the most recent property conveyances. Cf. Hodel v. Irving, 481 U. S. 704, 718 (1987) (noting the difficulties that attend the "extreme fractionation of Indian lands").
The ability of nonmembers to know where tribal jurisdiction begins and ends, it should be stressed, is a matter of real, practical consequence given "[t]he special nature of [Indian] tribunals," Duro v. Reina, 495 U. S. 676, 693 (1990), which differ from traditional American courts in a number of significant respects. To start with the most obvious one, it has been understood for more than a century that the Bill of Rights and the Fourteenth Amendment do not of their own force apply to Indian tribes. See Talton v. Mayes, 163 U. S. 376, 382-385 (1896); F. Cohen, Handbook of Federal In-
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