united-states us-constitution
Can an American Indian tribe be a monarchy?
<p>The US constitution guarantees States a republican form of government. Does this apply to sovereign American Indian tribes, or could a tribe decide to have a hereditary chieftainship?</p>

<p>The answers above are all hypothetical, but I think its important to add the clear statutory authority on the organization of American Indians, set out in Title 25 U.S.C (Indians):</p>
<blockquote>
<p><strong>25 U.S.C. § 5123</strong>
<em>(a) Adoption; effective date</em></p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>Any Indian tribe shall
have the right to organize for its common welfare, and may adopt an
appropriate constitution and bylaws, and any amendments thereto, which
shall become effective when— (1)ratified by a majority vote of the
adult members of the tribe or tribes at a special election authorized
and called by the Secretary under such rules and regulations as the
Secretary may prescribe; and (2)approved by the Secretary pursuant to
subsection (d) of this section.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Further down in the same title, we see:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><strong>25 U.S.C. § 5123(h)Tribal sovereignty</strong></p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>Notwithstanding any other provision of this Act—
(1)each Indian tribe shall retain inherent sovereign power to adopt governing documents under procedures other than those specified in this section; and
(2)nothing in this Act invalidates any constitution or other governing document adopted by an Indian tribe after June 18, 1934, in accordance with the authority described in paragraph (1).</p>
</blockquote>
<p>As we can see, Congress, in exercise of its plenary power, has not altered or changed the inherent sovereign powers of Indian nations to adopt the form of government they so choose, even without approval from the Secretary of the Interior; so long as such government complied with the provisions of the Indian Civil Rights Act, it could have any organization the sovereign tribe found pleasing.  As Indian tribes are sovereign except to the extent limited by Act of Congress made in exercise of Congress's plenary power, they can do whatever they like except where circumscribed (that, after all, is the definition of sovereignty).</p>

<p>The U.S. Constitution would not forbid an Indian tribe recognized by the United States from being organized as a hereditary monarchy, as the applicable limitations on grants of titles of nobility and a Republican form of government, by their terms, apply only to U.S. states and to the federal government. The <a href="https://www.tribal-institute.org/lists/icra1968.htm" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Indian Civil Rights Act of 1968</a> likewise does not expressly rule out the possibility on a hereditary monarchy or hereditary constitutional monarchy in an Indian Tribe (Indian tribes are also not expressly prohibited by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, from establishing a religion, unlike the federal government and the government of U.S. states).</p>
<p>This said, it is not obvious that there might not be other law that could prohibit the practice.</p>
<p>Many provisions of the U.S. Constitution, and of U.S. law, and many treaties between Indian tribes and the United States apply to Indian tribes. Some of these laws and treaties apply to some Indian tribes, but not others.</p>
<p>Members of U.S. Indian tribes are U.S. citizens in addition to being &quot;persons&quot; and so they have the full range of individual constitutional rights that apply to individuals. But the only plausible provision I can imagine to provide political rights within an Indian tribe would be the 14th Amendment's equal protection clause protections. This has been used to determine how political rights in a democratically organized body must be handled, but not to determine if democracy itself is required (because other legal provisions govern that question in U.S. states).</p>
<p>The U.S. Constitution does not require all areas under U.S. legal authority to have democratic government. Historically, some U.S. territories were administered by federally appointed governors without an elected body to advise or constrain the governor. U.S. military bases, scientific bases (e.g. in Antarctica and on a space station), and U.S. embassies are also governed by federal government appointees. Ships on the high seas under U.S. flag are not required to be democratically organized. None of those areas, however, have hereditary monarchies.</p>
<p>Most relevant as a precedent may be the legal status of the former <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lili%CA%BBuokalani" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Queen of Hawaii</a> over Native Hawaiians (which is not a legally recognized Indian tribe and so is not exactly on point), which is a somewhat tangled story legally and factually. It is also possible that a hereditary monarch of an Indian tribe could be understood to have an inherited interest in the collective property of the Indian tribe, rather than sovereign authority over the tribe's members (something litigated in the case of Hawaii, where it was held that the Queen's title to property was not private property in the sense of the 5th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and thus could be seized by the U.S. without just compensation).</p>
<p>I'm not aware of any provision of law that prohibits Indian tribes from being organized as monarchies. But this is a sprawling area of law and I wouldn't be shocked if I was unaware of some applicable authority that required Indian tribes to have democratic self-government as most or all tribes in the U.S. do in practice, or to the contrary, expressly held that this practice was allowed.</p>
