402
Stevens, J., concurring in judgment
U. S. C. § 1983.1 I agree instead with the Solicitor General's submission that a tribal court may entertain such a claim unless enjoined from doing so by a federal court. See Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 24-30.
The majority's analysis of this question is exactly backwards. It appears to start from the assumption that tribal courts do not have jurisdiction to hear federal claims unless federal law expressly grants them the power, see ante, at 367-368, and then concludes that, because no such express grant of power has occurred with respect to § 1983, tribal courts must lack the authority to adjudicate those claims. Ante, at 368 ("[N]o provision in federal law provides for tribal-court jurisdiction over § 1983 actions"). But the Court's initial assumption is deeply flawed. Absent federal law to the contrary, the question whether tribal courts are courts of general jurisdiction is fundamentally one of tribal law. Cf. Gulf Offshore Co. v. Mobil Oil Corp., 453 U. S. 473, 478 (1981) (State-court subject-matter jurisdiction is "gov-1 As an initial matter, it is not at all clear to me that the Court's discussion of the § 1983 issue is necessary to the disposition of this case. Strate v. A-1 Contractors, 520 U. S. 438 (1997), discusses the question whether a tribal court can exercise jurisdiction over nonmembers, irrespective of the type of claim being raised. See id., at 459, n. 14 ("When . . . it is plain that no federal grant provides for tribal governance of nonmembers' conduct on land covered by [the main rule in] Montana [v. United States, 450 U. S. 544 (1981)], . . . it will be equally evident that tribal courts lack adjudicatory authority over disputes arising from such conduct"). Cf. El Paso Natural Gas Co. v. Neztsosie, 526 U. S. 473, 482, n. 4 (1999) ("Strate dealt with claims against nonmembers arising on state highways, and 'express[ed] no view on the governing law or proper forum when an accident occurs on a tribal road within a reservation' "). Given the majority's determination in Part II that tribal courts lack such jurisdiction over "state wardens executing a search warrant for evidence of an off-reservation crime," ante, at 357, I fail to see why the Court needs to reach out to discuss the seemingly hypothetical question whether, if the tribal courts had jurisdiction over claims against "state wardens executing a search warrant," they could hear § 1983 claims against those wardens.
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