Syllabus
(b) Hall’s determination misreads the historical record and misapprehends the constitutional design created by the Framers. Although the Constitution assumes that the States retain their sovereign immunity except as otherwise provided, it also fundamentally adjusts the States’ relationship with each other and curtails the States’ ability, as sovereigns, to decline to recognize each other’s immunity in their own courts. Pp. 5–16.
(1) At the time of the founding, it was well settled that States were immune from suit both under the common law and under the law of nations. The States retained these aspects of sovereignty, “except as altered by the plan of the Convention or certain constitutional Amendments.” Alden v. Maine, 527 U. S. 706, 713. Pp. 6–9.
(2) Article III. abrogated certain aspects of the States’ traditional immunity by providing a neutral federal forum in which the States agreed to be amenable to suits brought by other States. And in ratifying the Constitution, the States similarly surrendered a portion of their immunity by consenting to suits brought against them by the United States in federal courts. When this Court held in Chisholm v. Georgia, 2 Dall. 419, that Article III. extended the federal judicial power over controversies between a State and citizens of another State, Congress and the States acted swiftly to draft and ratify the Eleventh Amendment, which confirms that the Constitution was not meant to “rais[e] up” any suits against the States that were “anomalous and unheard of when the Constitution was adopted,” Hans v. Louisiana, 134 U. S. 1, 18. The “natural inference” from the Amendment’s speedy adoption is that “the Constitution was understood, in light of its history and structure, to preserve the States’ traditional immunity from private suits.” Alden, supra, at 723–724. This view of the States’ sovereign immunity accorded with the understanding of the Constitution by its leading advocates, including Hamilton, Madison, and Marshall, when it was ratified. Pp. 9–12.
