Opinion of the Court
sending a communique to Pennsylvania requesting that its executive branch have the action dismissed. See Letter from Virginia Delegates to Supreme Executive Council of Pennsylvania (July 9, 1781), in 3 The Papers of James Madison, 184–185 (W. Hutchinson & W. Rachal eds. 1963). As Madison framed it, the Commonwealth’s property could not be attached by process issuing from a court of “any other State in the Union.” Id., at 184. To permit otherwise would require Virginia to “abandon its Sovereignty by descending to answer before the Tribunal of another Power.” Ibid. Pennsylvania Attorney General William Bradford intervened, urging the Court of Common Pleas to dismiss the action. See Nathan v. Virginia, 1 Dall. 77, 78 (C. P. Phila. Cty. 1781). According to Bradford, the suit violated international law because “all sovereigns are in a state of equality and independence, exempt from each other’s jurisdiction.” Ibid. “[A]ll jurisdiction implies superiority over the party,” Bradford argued, “but there could be no superiority” between the States, and thus no jurisdiction, because the States were “perfect[ly] equa[l]” and “entire[ly] independen[t].” Ibid. The court agreed and refused to grant Nathan the writ of attachment. Id., at 80.
Similarly, a Pennsylvania Admiralty Court that very same year dismissed a libel action against a South Carolina warship, brought by its crew to recover unpaid wages. The court reasoned that the vessel was owned by a “sovereign independent state.” Moitez v. The South Carolina, 17 F. Cas. 574 (No. 9697) (1781).
The Founders were well aware of the international-law immunity principles behind these cases. Federalists and Antifederalists alike agreed in their preratification debates that States could not be sued in the courts of other States. One Federalist, who argued that Article III would waive the States’ immunity in federal court, admitted that the waiver was desirable because of the “impossibility of
