The decision applied the Fifth Amendment’s just compensation requirement to a taking of tribal lands with a rigor and thoroughness that represented a significant development in how the courts analyzed such claims.

The finding that Congress had acted in bad faith — that the “sell or starve” policy and the ten-percent signature rate made the 1877 act a taking rather than a legitimate exercise of the government’s trust responsibilities — was a clear-eyed accounting of historical conduct that American courts had not always been willing to undertake.

But the victory was hollow in the specific sense that mattered most to the Sioux people: the Court returned the money but not the land.

Justice Rehnquist, the sole dissenter, argued that the majority had engaged in an inappropriate reexamination of historical judgments and that Congress had broad discretion in managing Indian affairs.

The majority rejected his analysis.

But the majority’s own analysis, however rigorous in its assessment of historical wrongdoing, arrived at a remedy that the legal system was equipped to provide: money.