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Page Number: 30

8 

TORRES v. TEXAS DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC SAFETY 

THOMAS, J., dissenting 

i.e., in the plan of the Convention.  Id., at 730–731 (empha-
sis added; internal quotation marks omitted); see also ante, 
at 4.  In determining whether such evidence existed, Alden 
began with the text of the Constitution.  See 527 U. S., at 
731.  It recognized that Article I, §8, “grants . . . Congress
broad powers to enact legislation in several enumerated ar-
eas of national concern”—including, of course, the war pow-
ers.  Ibid.  But neither the breadth of those powers nor their 
connection  to  “areas  of  national  concern”  sufficed  to  show 
that States ratified the Constitution with the understand-
ing that they had surrendered to Congress any power to au-
thorize private damages actions against them in their own 
courts.  See id., at 731–733. 

Alden  spoke  emphatically  and  categorically  when  ex-
plaining why the States had effected no such surrender.  We 
found  it  telling  that  “no  one,  not  even  the  Constitution’s 
most  ardent  opponents,  suggested  the  document  might
strip the States of the[ir] immunity” from suit “in their own
courts.”  Id.,  at  741.  That  was  likely  because  “the  sover-
eign’s right to assert immunity from suit in its own courts
was a principle so well established that no one conceived it 
would be altered by the new Constitution.”  Ibid. (emphasis
added).  We explained how the founding generation’s con-
cern  that  “Article  III  might  be  used  to  circumvent  state-
court  immunity”  counseled  against  “infer[ring]  that  the 
Constitution stripped the States of immunity in their own
courts and allowed Congress to subject them to suit there.” 
Id.,  at  743.    Rather,  in  light  of  the  historical  record,  we
found  it  “difficult  to  conceive  that  the  Constitution  would 
have  been  adopted  if  it  had  been  understood  to  strip  the
States of immunity from suit in their own courts and cede
to the Federal Government a power to subject nonconsent-
ing States to private suits in these fora.”  Ibid. 

Importantly, the scope of Alden’s holding was broad: “We 
hold that the powers delegated to Congress under Article I
of the United States Constitution do not include the power