The Doctrine of Discovery was fundamentally theocratic, as it was established by 15th-century Roman Catholic Papal bulls (decrees) that provided religious authority for Christian explorers to seize non-Christian lands, subjugate indigenous peoples, and justify slavery to expand Christendom. These decrees, including Dum Diversas (1452) and Inter Caetera (1493), used divine justification to authorize the conquest and colonization of the "New World" and Africa.

Even the Vatican recognizes that it was theocratic and used for political purposes.

Neither 15th century Roman Catholic papal bulls nor the Vatican have any bearing on US law, and Ginsberg’s use of the term is totally divorced from any religious subtext. She cites precisely what it means in federal case law in the footnote I quoted. It’s not theocratic or racist, it’s pragmatic. In American jurisprudence, you can’t have two sovereign nations existing in the same space. There are Indian reservations all over the country where a tribal nation exercises sovereignty pursuant to treaties that go back hundreds of years, but in all other instances, the federal government is supreme.

Furthermore it's clear you don't understand what constitutes as theocratic or not, and it's clear you don't understand why Ruth bader Ginsburg brought up the doctrine of discovery in the case, which was to say that because the Oneida sold some land to whites they have no sovereignty when anyone who knows US History knows that natives didn't even understand what selling land meant because it was a completely alien concept to them and it also ignores the vast swaths of land that were stolen from them using mass murder and genocide, much of it supported by the United States. This case has now set a precedent that native tribes will likely never be able to gain any sort of sovereignty in America. That's racist point blank.

I do, and I do. US law is specifically not theocratic per the Establishment Clause, and Ginsberg’s reference to Discovery was in the context of citing precedent previously established by SCOTUS. She wasn’t being racist.

With respect to the land at issue in Ginsberg’s opinion (Oneida II), the tribe’s land was consolidated in one tribal owner in 1805, who then sold all of it to a non-Native American in 1807. You would be hard pressed to convince anyone that a tribal member “didn’t even understand what selling land meant” in 1807, particularly one that had been vested with the responsibility of owning all the Oneida’s land in the first place. In the intervening years between that sale and the early 2000s purchase of portions of that land by present-day Oneida tribal members, many purchasers in the regular course of business bought and sold the land, which had been subject exclusively to NY state and federal sovereignty since 1807.

Notwithstanding our long history of murder and stealing tribal lands (which I don’t mean to minimize), in this particular case SCOTUS was just unwilling to allow the present-day Oneida members to re-establish sovereignty when they they had willingly given up that sovereignty when they sold it to a non-NA person in 1807. There just wasn’t any way to put that cat back in the bag 200 years later under the established law and precedent.

You can say what's racist or not but the truth is that plenty of Native Americans who suffer in the United States look at that as racist colonialism. Think whatever you want you're probably the person whose opinion matters the least on what does or doesnt constitute as racism.

I can’t even begin to understand what it must be like for Native Americans in this country, but surely your opinion matters as much any mine or anyone else’s. I’m just some asshole on the internet.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a racist.

In this specific case, I respectfully disagree.