Hodel, Secretary of the Interior v. Irving et al. (481 U.S. 704)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided May 18, 1987 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 481 U.S. 704 · 107 S. Ct. 2076
- Decided
- May 18, 1987
- Term
- October Term 1986
- Vote
- 9–0
- Majority author
- Justice O'Connor
- Issue area
- Due Process
- Disposition
- Affirmed
- Outcome
- Petitioning party lost
- Ideological direction
- Conservative
- Constitutional ruling
- Federal law held unconstitutional
Opinion excerpt
Justice O’Connor delivered the opinion of the Court. The question presented is whether the original version of the “escheat” provision of the Indian Land Consolidation Act of 1983, Pub. L. 97-459, Tit. II, 96 Stat. 2519, effected a “taking” of appellees’ decedents’ property without just compensation. I Towards the end of the 19th century, Congress enacted a series of land Acts which divided the communal reservations of Indian tribes into individual allotments for Indians and unallotted lands for non-Indian settlement. This legislation seems to have been in part animated by a desire to force Indians to abandon their nomadic ways in order to “speed the Indians’ assimilation into American society,” Solem v. Bartlett, 465 U. S. 463, 466 (1984), and in part a result of pressure to free new lands for further white settlement. Ibid. Two years after the enactment of the General Allotment Act of 1887, ch. 119, 24 Stat. 388, Congress adopted a specific statute authorizing the division of the Great Reservation of the Sioux Nation into separate reservations and the allotment of specific tracts of reservation land to individual Indians, conditioned on the consent of three-fourths of the adult male Sioux. Act of Mar. 2, 1889, ch. 405, 25 Stat. 888. Under the Act, each male Sioux head of household took 320 acres of land and most other individuals 160 acres. 25 Stat. 890. In order to protect…
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