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Comment by cgb223 | Hacker News Reader

> The ruling means that for the first time much of eastern Oklahoma is legally considered reservation land. More than 1.8 million people live in the land at issue, including roughly 400,000 in Tulsa, Oklahoma’s second-largest city.

So does this effectively create two different rules of law over the same land...?

Like how does this work?

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It probably will come down to further court cases, but likely, yeah half of Oklahoma will be subject to Oklahoma state law, and half will be subject to tribal law. That's no different than a state being neighbor to a different state with looser/different laws.

Probably they'll work out a compromise like: tribal government pays Oklahoma fees to have them run infrastructure as they have been, and the State forwards tax money to the tribal governments. That seems like the most logical short term solution, essentially status quo.

But the main change will be that tribal lands may now have more power to change local laws (such as ignoring laws against selling alcohol on sundays, etc).

It's actually a lot more complicated than that. Tribal law is mostly for intra tribal criminal cases, and does not have jurisdiction over people who aren't members of the tribe or when a crime is committed outside a reservation. So, going from having a relatively small portion of a state, where most people were probably part of a tribe to having have a state in that status makes thinks very complicated for law enforcement. It's not like the tribes just randomly took over half of Oklahoma and established a new state. For most people, Oklahoma will still have jurisdiction over them.

https://medium.com/@WillandCoch/the-tribal-court-system-what...

> such as ignoring laws against selling alcohol on sundays

Seems like a poor example to reach for.

It's been that way, this isn't much of a change for the tribes. Effectively, the tribes have a different system of governance that falls under federal jurisdiction. They're "outside" the state government. It's a hot mess, but I don't think forcing sovereign nations to conform the the occupational nation is a good idea.

Currently the federal government has a wide range of powers over reservation land such as the ability to prosecute crime. For better or for worse, Congress can expand these powers at any time to include dissolving the reservation. The law in all these aforementioned areas is well settled.

The issue in this case was with a state government, specifically Oklahoma. This ruling will limit Oklahoma's ability to prosecute crime when (1) it occurs on the reservation and (2) involves members of the tribe. Congress would have to act to change this, or some agreement could be reached with the tribe.

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