"Federal Indian law . . . is a loosely related collection of past and present acts of Congress, treaties and agreements, executive orders, administrative rulings, and judicial opinions, connected only by the fact that law in some form has been applied haphazardly to American Indians over the course of several centuries. . . . Indians in their tribal relation and Indian tribes in their relation to the federal government hang suspended in a legal wonderland."

In this book, two prominent scholars of American Indian law and politics undertake a full historical examination of the relationship between Indians and the United States Constitution that explains the present state of confusion and inconsistent application in U.S. Indian law. The authors examine all sections of the Constitution that explicitly and implicitly apply to Indians and discuss how they have been interpreted and applied from the early republic up to the present. They convincingly argue that the Constitution does not provide any legal rights for American Indians and that the treaty-making process should govern relations between Indian nations and the federal government.

• Introduction
• Chapter I. Europeans and the New World
• Chapter II. The Articles of Confederation
• Chapter III. The Constitution and American Indian Tribes
  • The Federalist Papers
  • Explicit Clauses Dealing with Indians
  • Implicit Clauses Dealing with Indians
• Chapter IV. The Relationship of Indian Tribes to the Three Branches of the Federal Government
  • Indians and the Executive Branch
  • Indians and the Legislative Branch
  • Indians and the Judicial Branch
• Chapter V. The Historical Development of Constitutional Clauses
  • The Treaty-making Power
  • The Power to Regulate Commerce
  • The Property Clause
  • Miscellaneous Constitutional Clauses
• Chapter VI. The Constitutional Amendments
  • The Bill of Rights
  • The First Amendment: The Establishment of Religion
  • The First Amendment: The Free Exercise Clause
    • The Lyng Decision
    • The Smith Decision
  • The First Amendment: Freedoms of Speech and Assembly
  • The Fourth Amendment: Search and Seizure
  • The Fifth Amendment: Double Jeopardy
  • The Fifth Amendment: Due Process
  • The Fifth Amendment: Just Compensation
  • The Sixth Amendment: Legal Counsel
• Chapter VII. The Later Constitutional Amendments
  • The Thirteenth Amendment
  • The Fourteenth Amendment: Citizenship and Due Process
  • The Fifteenth Amendment
  • The Sixteenth Amendment
  • The Prohibition Amendments
  • The Twenty-sixth Amendment
• Chapter VIII. The Status of Indian Tribes and the Constitution
• Notes
• References
• Index of Cases
• General Index