Task: sc_decisiontype

What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to identify the type of decision made by the court among the following: Consider "opinion of the court (orally argued)" if the court decided the case by a signed opinion and the case was orally argued. For the 1791-1945 terms, the case need not be orally argued, but a justice must be listed as delivering the opinion of the Court. Consider "per curiam (no oral argument)" if the court decided the case with an opinion but without hearing oral arguments. For the 1791-1945 terms, the Court (or reporter) need not use the term "per curiam" but rather "The Court [said],""By the Court," or "By direction of the Court." Consider "decrees" in the infrequent type of decisions where the justices will typically appoint a special master to take testimony and render a report, the bulk of which generally becomes the Court's decision. This type of decision usually arises under the Court's original jurisdiction and involves state boundary disputes. Consider "equally divided vote" for cases decided by an equally divided vote, for example when a justice fails to participate in a case or when the Court has a vacancy. Consider "per curiam (orally argued)" if no individual justice's name appears as author of the Court's opinion and the case was orally argued. Consider "judgment of the Court (orally argued)" for formally decided cases (decided the case by a signed opinion) where less than a majority of the participating justices agree with the opinion produced by the justice assigned to write the Court's opinion.

Justice Kennedy
delivered the opinion of the Court.
In 1992, petitioners, a group of probation officers, filed suit against their employer, the State of Maine, in the United States District Court for the District of Maine. The officers alleged the State had violated the overtime provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (FLSA), 52 Stat. 1060, as amended, 29 U. S. C. §201 et seq. (1994 ed. and Supp. Ill), and sought compensation and liquidated damages. While the suit was pending, this Court decided Seminole Tribe of Fla. v. Florida, 517 U. S. 44 (1996), which made it clear that Congress lacks power under Article I to abrogate the States’ sovereign immunity from suits commenced or prosecuted in the federal courts. Upon consideration of Seminole Tribe, the District Court dismissed petitioners’ action, and the Court of Appeals affirmed. Mills v. Maine, 118 F. 3d 37 (CA1 1997). Petitioners then filed the same action in state court. The state trial court dismissed the suit on the basis of sovereign immunity, and the Maine Supreme Judicial Court? affirmed. 715 A. 2d 172 (1998).
The Maine Supreme Judicial Court’s decision conflicts with the decision of the Supreme Court of Arkansas, Jacoby v. Arkansas Dept. of Ed., 331 Ark. 508, 962 S. W. 2d 773 (1998), and calls into question the constitutionality of the provisions of the FLSA purporting to authorize private actions against States in their own courts without regard for consent, see 29 U. S. C. §§ 216(b), 203(x). In light of the importance of the question presented and the conflict between the courts, we granted certiorari. 525 U. S. 981 (1998). The United States intervened as a petitioner to defend the statute.
We hold that the powers delegated to Congress under Article I of the United States Constitution do not include the power to subject nonconsenting States to private suits for damages in state courts. We decide as well that the State of Maine has not consented to suits for overtime pay and liquidated damages under the FLSA. On these premises we affirm the judgment sustaining dismissal of the suit.
I
The Eleventh Amendment makes explicit reference to the States’ immunity from suits “commenced or prosecuted against one of the United States by Citizens of another State, or by Citizens or Subjects of any Foreign State.” U. S. Const., Amdt. 11. We have, as a result, sometimes referred to the States’ immunity from suit as “Eleventh Amendment immunity.” The phrase is convenient shorthand but something of a misnomer, for the sovereign immunity of the States neither derives from, nor is limited by, the terms of the Eleventh Amendment. Rather, as the Constitution’s structure, its history, and the authoritative interpretations by this Court make clear, the States’ immunity from suit.is a fundamental aspect of the sovereignty which the States enjoyed before the ratification of the Constitution, and which they retain today (either literally or by virtue of their admission into the Union upon an equal footing with the other States) except as altered by the plan of the Convention or certain constitutional Amendments.
A
Although the Constitution establishes a National Government with broad, often plenary authority over matters within its recognized competence, the founding document “specifically recognizes the States as sovereign entities.” Seminole Tribe of Fla. v. Florida, supra, at 71, n. 15; accord, Blatchford v. Native Village of Noatak, 501 U. S. 775, 779 (1991) (“[T]he States entered the federal system with their sovereignty intact”). Various textual provisions of the Constitution assume the States’ continued existence and active participation in the fundamental processes of governance. See Printz v. United States, 521 U. S. 898, 919 (1997) (citing Art. III, §2; Art. IV, §§2-4; Art. V). The limited and enumerated powers granted to the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial Branches of the National Government, moreover, underscore the vital role reserved to the States by the constitutional design, see, e.g., Art. I, §8; Art. II, §§2-3; Art. III, §2. Any doubt regarding the constitutional role of the States as sovereign entities is removed by the Tenth Amendment, which, like the other provisions of the Bill of Rights, was enacted to allay lingering concerns about the extent of the national power. The Amendment confirms the promise implicit in the original document: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” U. S. Const., Amdt. 10; see also Priniz, supra, at 919; New York v. United States, 505 U. S. 144, 156-159, 177 (1992).
The federal system established by our Constitution preserves the sovereign status of the States in two ways. First, it reserves to them a substantial portion of the Nation’s primary sovereignty, together with the dignity and essential attributes inhering in that status. The States “form distinct and independent portions of the supremacy, no more subject, within their respective spheres, to the general authority than the general authority is subject to them, within its own sphere.” The Federalist No. 39, p. 245 (C. Rossiter ed. 1961) (J. Madison).
Second, even as to matters within the competence of the National Government, the constitutional design secures the founding generation’s rejection of “the concept of a central government that would act upon and through the States” in favor of “a system in which the State and Federal Governments would exercise concurrent authority over the people— who were, in Hamilton’s words, ‘the only proper objects of government.’ ” Printz, supra, at 919-920 (quoting The Federalist No. 15, at 109); accord, New York, supra, at 166 (“The Framers explicitly chose a Constitution that confers upon Congress the power to regulate individuals, not States”). In this the Founders achieved a deliberate departure from the Articles of Confederation: Experience under the Articles had “exploded on all hands” the “practicality of making laws, with coercive sanctions, for the States as political bodies.” 2 Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, p. 9 (M. Farrand ed. 1911) (J. Madison); accord, The Federalist No. 20, at 138 (J. Madison and A. Hamilton); James Iredell: Some Objections to the Constitution Answered, reprinted in 3 Annals of America 249 (1976).
The States thus retain “a residuary and inviolable sovereignty.” The Federalist No. 39, at 245. They are not relegated to the role of mere provinces or political corporations, but retain the dignity, though not the Ml authority, of sovereignty.
B
The generation that designed and adopted our federal system considered immunity from private suits central to sovereign dignity. When the Constitution was ratified, it was well established in English law that the Crown could not be sued without consent in its own courts. See Chisholm v. Georgia, 2 Dall. 419, 437-446 (1793) (Iredell, J., dissenting) (surveying English practice); cf. Nevada v. Hall, 440 U. S. 410, 414 (1979) (“The immunity of a truly independent sovereign from suit in its own courts has been enjoyed as a matter of absolute right for centuries. Only the sovereign’s own consent could qualify the absolute character of that immunity”). In reeiting the prerogatives of the Crown, Blackstone — whose works constituted the preeminent authority on English law for the founding generation — underscored the close and necessary relationship understood to exist between sovereignty and immunity from suit:
“And, first, the law ascribes to the king the attribute of sovereignty, or pre-eminence.... Hence it is, that no suit or action can be brought against the king, even in civil matters, because no court can have jurisdiction over him. For all jurisdiction implies superiority of power....” 1 W. Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England 234r-235 (1765).
Although the American people had rejected other aspects of English political theory, the doctrine that a sovereign could not be sued without its consent was universal in the States when the Constitution was drafted and ratified. See Chisholm, supra, at 434-435 (Iredell, J., dissenting) (“I believe there is no doubt that neither in the State now in question, nor in any other in the Union, any particular Legislative mode, authorizing a compulsory suit for the recovery of money against a State, was in being either when the Constitution was adopted, or at the time the judicial act was passed”); Hans v. Louisiana, 134 U. S. 1, 16 (1890) (“The suability of a State, without its consent, was a thing unknown to the law. This has been so often laid down and acknowledged by courts and jurists that it is hardly necessary to be formally asserted”).
The ratification debates, furthermore, underscored the importance of the States' sovereign immunity to the American people. Grave concerns were raised by the provisions of Article III, which extended the federal judicial power to controversies between States and citizens of other States or foreign nations. As we have explained:
“Unquestionably the doctrine of sovereign immunity was a matter of importance in the early days of independence. Many of the States were heavily indebted as a result of the Revolutionary War. They were vitally interested in the question whether the creation of a new federal sovereign, with courts of its own, would automatically subject them, like lower English lords, to suits in the courts of the ‘higher’ sovereign.” Hall, supra, at 418 (footnote omitted).
The leading advocates of the Constitution assured the people in no uncertain terms that the Constitution would not strip the States of sovereign immunity. One assurance was contained in The Federalist No. 81, written by Alexander Hamilton:
“It is inherent in the nature of sovereignty not to be amenable to the suit of an individual without its consent This is the general sense and the general practice of mankind; and the exemption, as one of the attributes of sovereignty, is now enjoyed by the government of every State in the Union. Unless, therefore, there is a surrender of this immunity in the plan of the convention, it will remain with the States and the danger intimated must be merely ideal.... [T]here is no color to pretend that the State governments would, by the adoption of that plan, be divested of the privilege of paying their own debts in their own way, free from every constraint but that which flows from the obligations of good faith. The contracts between a nation and individuals are only binding on the conscience of the sovereign, and have no pretensions to a compulsive force. They confer no right of action independent of the sovereign will. To what purpose would it be to authorize suits against States for the debts they owe? How could recoveries be enforced? It is evident that it could not be done without waging war against the contracting State; and to ascribe to the federal courts, by mere implication, and in destruction of a preexisting right of the State governments, a power which would involve such a consequence, would be altogether forced and unwarrantable.” Id., at 487-488 (emphasis in original).
At the Virginia ratifying convention, James Madison echoed this theme:
“Its jurisdiction in controversies between a state and citizens of another state is much objected to, and perhaps without reason. It is not in the power of individuals to call any state into court....
“... It appears to me that this [clause] can have no operation but this — to give a citizen a right to be heard in the federal courts; and if a state should condescend to be a party, this court may take cognizance of it.” 8 Debates on the Federal Constitution 533 (J. Elliot 2d ed. 1854) (hereinafter Elliot’s Debates).
When Madison’s explanation was questioned, John Marshall provided immediate support:
“With respect to disputes between a state and the citizens of another state, its jurisdiction has been decried with unusual vehemence. I hope no gentleman will think that a state will be called at the bar of the federal court. Is there no such ease at present? Are there not many cases in which the legislature of Virginia is a party, and yet the state is not sued? It is not rational to suppose that the sovereign power should be dragged before a court. The intent is, to enable states to recover claims of individuals residing in other states. I contend this construction is warranted by the words. But, say they, there will be partiality in it if a state cannot be defendant.... It is necessary to be so, and cannot be avoided. I see a difficulty in making a state defendant, which does not prevent its being plaintiff.” 3 id., at 555-556 (emphasis in original).
Although the state conventions which addressed the issue of sovereign immunity in their formal ratification documents sought to clarify the point by constitutional amendment, they made clear that they, like Hamilton, Madison, and Marshall, understood the Constitution as drafted to preserve the States’ immunity from private suits. The Rhode Island Convention thus proclaimed that “[i]t is declared by the Convention, that the judicial power of the United States, in eases in which a state may be a party, does not extend to criminal prosecutions, or to authorize any suit by any person against a state.” 1 id., at 386. The convention sought, in addition, an express amendment “to remove all doubts or controversies respecting the same.” Ibid. In a similar fashion, the New York Convention “declare[d] and ma[d]e known,” 1 id., at 327, its understanding “[t]hat the judicial power of the United States, in cases in which a state may be a party, does not extend to criminal prosecutions, or to authorize any suit by any person against a state,” 1 id., at 329. The convention proceeded to ratify the Constitution “[u]nder these impressions, and declaring that the rights aforesaid cannot be abridged or violated, and that the explanations aforesaid are consistent with the said Constitution, and in confidence that the amendments which shall have been proposed to the said Constitution will receive an early and mature consideration.” Ibid.
Despite the persuasive assurances of the Constitution’s leading advocates and the expressed understanding of the only state conventions to address the issue in explicit terms, this Court held, just five years after the Constitution was adopted, that Article III authorized a private citizen of another State to sue the State of Georgia without its consent. Chisholm v. Georgia, 2 Dall. 419 (1793). Each of the four Justices who concurred in the judgment issued a separate opinion. The common theme of the opinions was that the case fell within the literal text of Article III, which by its terms granted jurisdiction over controversies “between a State and Citizens of another State,” and “between a State, or the Citizens thereof, and foreign States, Citizens, or Subjects.” U. S. Const., Art. III, §2. The argument that this provision granted jurisdiction only over cases in which the State was a plaintiff was dismissed as inconsistent with the ordinary meaning of “between,” and with the provision extending jurisdiction to “Controversies between two or more States,” which by necessity contemplated jurisdiction over suits to which States were defendants. Two Justices also argued that sovereign immunity was inconsistent with the principle of popular sovereignty established by the Constitution, 2 Dall., at 454-458 (Wilson, J.); id., at 470-472 (Jay, C. J.); although the others did not go so far, they contended that the text of Article III evidenced the States’ surrender of sovereign immunity as to those provisions extending jurisdiction over suits to which States were parties, id., at 452 (Blair, J.); id., at 468 (Cushing, J.).
Justice Iredell dissented, relying on American history, id., at 434-435, English history, id., at 437-446, and the principles of enumerated powers and separate sovereignty, id., at 435-436, 448, 449-450. See generally Hans, 134 U. S., at 12 (“The other justices were more swayed by a close observance of the letter of the Constitution, without regard to former experience and usage.... Justice Iredell, on the contrary, contended that it was not the intention to create new and unheard of remedies, by subjecting sovereign States to actions at the suit of individuals, (which he conclusively showed was never done before,) but only... to invest the federal courts with jurisdiction to hear and determine controversies and cases, between the parties designated, that were properly susceptible of litigation in courts”).
The Court’s decision “fell upon the country with a profound shock.” 1 C. Warren, The Supreme Court in United States History 96 (rev. ed. 1926); accord, Hans, supra, at 11; Principality of Monaco v. Mississippi, 292 U. S. 313, 325 (1934); Seminole Tribe, 517 U. S., at 69. “Newspapers representing a rainbow of opinion protested what they viewed as an unexpected blow to state sovereignty. Others spoke more concretely of prospective raids on state treasuries.” D. Currie, The Constitution in Congress: The Federalist Period 1789-1801, p. 196 (1997).
The States, in particular, responded with outrage to the decision. The Massachusetts Legislature, for example, denounced the decision as “repugnant to the first principles of a federal government,” and called upon the Commonwealth’s Senators and Representatives to take all necessary steps to “remove any clause or article of the... Constitution, which can be construed to imply or justify a decision, that, a State is compellable to answer in any suit by an individual or individuals in any Court of the United States.” 15 Papers of Alexander Hamilton 314 (H. Syrett & J. Cooke eds. 1969) (internal quotation marks omitted). Georgia’s response was more intemperate: Its House of Representatives passed a bill providing that anyone attempting to enforce the Chisholm decision would be “ ‘guilty of felony and shall suffer death, without benefit of clergy, by being hanged/ ” Currie, supra, at 196.
An initial proposal to amend the Constitution was introduced in the House of Representatives the day after Chisholm was announced; the proposal adopted as the Eleventh Amendment was introduced in the Senate promptly following an intervening recess. Currie, supra, at 196. Congress turned to the latter proposal with great dispatch; little more than two months after its introduction it had been endorsed by both Houses and forwarded to the States. 4 Annals of Congress 25, 30, 477, 499 (1794); 1 Stat. 402.
Each House spent but a single day discussing the Amendment, and the vote in each House was close to unanimous. See 4 Annals of Congress, at 30-31, 476-478 (the Senate divided 23 to 2; the House 81 to 9). All attempts to weaken the Amendment were defeated. Congress in succession rejected proposals to limit the Amendment to suits in which “ ‘the cause of action shall have arisen before the ratification of the amendment,’” or even to cases “‘where such State shall have previously made provision in their own Courts, whereby such suit may be prosecuted to effect’ ”; it refused as well to make an exception for “ ‘cases arising under treaties made under the authority of the United States.’ ” 4 id., at 30, 476.
It might be argued that the Chisholm decision was a correct interpretation of the constitutional design and that the Eleventh Amendment represented a deviation from the original understanding. This, however, seems unsupportable. First, despite the opinion of Justice Iredell, the majority failed to address either the practice or the understanding that prevailed in the States at the time the Constitution was adopted. Second, even a casual reading of the opinions suggests the majority suspected the decision would be unpopular and surprising. See, e. g., 2 Dall., at 454-455 (Wilson, J.) (condemning the prevailing conception of sovereignty); id., at 468 (Cushing, J.) (“If the Constitution is found inconvenient in practice in this or any other particular, it is well that a regular mode is pointed out for amendment”); id., at 478-479 (Jay, C. J.) (“[T]here is reason to hope that the people of [Georgia] will yet perceive that [sovereign immunity] would not have been consistent with [republican] equality”); cf. id., at 419-420 (attorney for Chisholm) (“I did not want the remonstrance of Georgia, to satisfy me, that the motion, which I have made is unpopular. Before that remonstrance was read, I had learnt from the acts of another State, whose will must be always dear to me, that she too condemned it”). Finally, two Members of the majority acknowledged that the United States might well remain immune from suit despite Article Ill’s grant of jurisdiction over “Controversies to which the United States shall be a Party,” see id., at 469 (Cushing, J.); id., at 478 (Jay, C. J.), and, invoking the example of actions to collect debts incurred before the Constitution was adopted, one raised the possibility of “exceptions,” suggesting the rule of the case might not “extend to all the demands, and to every kind of action,” id., at 479 (Jay, C. J.). These concessions undercut the crucial premise that either the Constitution’s literal text or the principle of popular sovereignty necessarily overrode widespread practice and opinion.
The text and history of the Eleventh Amendment also suggest that Congress acted not to change but to restore the original constitutional design. Although earlier drafts of the Amendment had been phrased as express limits on the judicial power granted in Article III, see, e. g., 3 Annals of Congress 651-652 (1793) (“The Judicial Power of the United States shall not extend to any suits in law or equity, commenced or prosecuted against one of the United States...”), the adopted text addressed the proper interpretation of that provision of the original Constitution, see U. S. Const., Arndt. 11 (“The Judicial power of the United States shall not be construed to extend to any suit in law or equity, commenced or prosecuted against one of the United States.. By its terms, then, the Eleventh Amendment did not redefine the federal judicial power but instead overruled the Court:
“This amendment, expressing the will of the ultimate sovereignty of the whole country, superior to all legislatures and all courts, actually reversed the decision of the Supreme Court. It did not in terms prohibit suits by individuals against the States, but declared that the Constitution should not be construed to import any power to authorize the bringing of such suits.... The Supreme Court had construed the judicial power as extending to such a suit, and its decision was thus overruled.” Hans, 134 U. S., at 11.
The text reflects the historical context and the congressional objective in endorsing the Amendment for ratification. Congress chose not to enact language codifying the traditional understanding of sovereign immunity but rather to address the specific provisions of the Constitution that had raised concerns during the ratification debates and formed the basis of the Chisholm decision. Cf. 15 Papers of Alexander Hamilton, at 314 (quoted supra, at 720). Given the outraged reaction to Chisholm, as well as Congress’ repeated refusal to otherwise qualify the text of the Amendment, it is doubtful that if Congress meant to write a new immunity into the Constitution it would have limited that immunity to the narrow text of the Eleventh Amendment:
“Can we suppose that, when the Eleventh Amendment was adopted, it was understood to be left open for citizens of a State to sue their own state in the federal courts, whilst the idea of suits by citizens of other states, or of foreign states, was indignantly repelled? Suppose that Congress, when proposing the Eleventh Amendment, had appended to it a proviso that nothing therein contained should prevent a State from being sued by its own citizens in cases arising under the Constitution or laws of the United States: can we imagine that it would have been adopted by the States? The supposition that it would is almost an absurdity on its face.” Hans, supra, at 14-15.
The more natural inference is that the Constitution was understood, in light of its history and structure, to preserve the States’ traditional immunity from private suits. As the Amendment clarified the only provisions of the Constitution that anyone had suggested might support a contrary understanding, there was no reason to draft with a broader brush.
Finally, the swiftness and near unanimity with which the Eleventh Amendment was adopted suggest “either that the Court had not captured the original understanding, or that the country had changed its collective mind most rapidly.” D. Currie, The Constitution in the Supreme Court: The First Hundred Years: 1789-1888, p. 18, n. 101 (1985). The more reasonable interpretation, of course, is that regardless of the views of four Justices in Chisholm, the country as a whole— which had adopted the Constitution just five years earlier— had not understood the document to strip the States of their immunity from private suits. Cf. Currie, The Constitution in Congress, at 196 (“It is plain that just about everybody in Congress agreed the Supreme Court had misread the Constitution”).
Although the dissent attempts to rewrite history to reflect a different original understanding, its evidence is unpersuasive. The handful of state statutory and constitutional provisions authorizing suits or petitions of right against States only confirms the prevalence of the traditional understanding that a State could not be sued in the absence of an express waiver, for if the understanding were otherwise, the provisions would have been unnecessary. The constitutional amendments proposed by the New York and Rhode Island Conventions undercut rather than support the dissent’s view of history, see supra, at 718-719, and the amendments proposed by the Virginia and North Carolina Conventions do not cast light upon the original understanding of the States’ immunity to suit. It is true that, in the course of all but eliminating federal-question and diversity jurisdiction, see 3 Elliot’s Debates 660-661 (amendment proposed by the Virginia Convention limiting the federal-question jurisdiction to suits arising under treaties and the diversity jurisdiction to suits between parties claiming lands under grants from different States); 4 id., at 246 (identical amendment proposed by the North Carolina Convention), the amendments would have removed the language in the Constitution relied upon by the Chisholm Court. While the amendments do reflect dissatisfaction with the scope of federal jurisdiction as a general matter, there is no evidence that they were directed toward the question of sovereign immunity or that they reflect an understanding that the States would be subject to private suits without consent under Article III as drafted.
The dissent’s remaining evidence cannot bear the weight the dissent seeks to place on it. The views voiced during the ratification debates by Edmund Randolph and James Wilson, when reiterated by the same individuals in their respective capacities as advocate and Justice in Chisholm, were decisively rejected by the Eleventh Amendment, and General Pinkney did not speak to the issue of sovereign immunity at all. Furthermore, Randolph appears to have recognized that his views were in tension with the traditional understanding of sovereign immunity, see 3 Elliot’s Debates 573 (“I think, whatever the law of nations may say, that any doubt respecting the construction that a state may be plaintiff, and not defendant, is taken away by the words where a state shall be a party”), and Wilson and Pinkney expressed a radical nationalist vision of the constitutional design that not only deviated from the views that prevailed at the time but, despite the dissent’s apparent embrace of the position, remains startling even today, see post, at 776 (quoting with approval Wilson’s statement that “ ‘the government of each state ought to be subordinate to the government of the United States’”). Nor do the controversial early suits prosecuted against Maryland and New York reflect a widespread understanding that the States had surrendered their immunity to suit. Maryland’s decision to submit to process in Vanstophorst v. Maryland, 2 Dall. 401 (1791), aroused great controversy, see Marcus & Wexler, Suits Against States: Diversity of Opinion in the 1790s, 1993 J. Sup. Ct. History 73, 74-75, and did not go unnoticed by the Supreme Court, see Chisholm, 2 Dall., at 429-430 (Iredell, J., dissenting). In Oswald v. New York, the State refused to respond to the plaintiff’s summons until after the decision in Chisholm had been announced; even then it at first asserted the defense that it was “a free, sovereign and independent State,” and could not be “drawn or compelled” to defend the suit. Marcus & Wexler, supra, at 76-77 (internal quotation marks omitted). And, though the Court’s decision in Chisholm may have had “champions ‘every bit as vigorous in defending their interpretation of the Constitution as were those partisans on the other side of the issue,’ ” post, at 794, the vote on the Eleventh Amendment makes clear that they were decidedly less numerous. See supra, at 721.
In short, the scanty and equivocal evidence offered by the dissent establishes no more than what is evident from the decision in Chisholm — that some members of the founding generation disagreed with Hamilton, Madison, Marshall, Ire-dell, and the only state conventions formally to address the matter. The events leading to the adoption of the Eleventh Amendment, however, make clear that the individuals who believed the Constitution stripped the States of their immunity from suit were at most a small minority.
Not only do the ratification debates and the events leading to the adoption of the Eleventh Amendment reveal the original understanding of the States’ constitutional immunity from suit; they also underscore the importance of sovereign immunity to the founding generation. Simply put, “The Constitution never would have been ratified if the States and their courts were to be stripped of their sovereign authority except as expressly provided by the Constitution itself.” Atascadero State Hospital v. Scanlon, 473 U. S. 234, 239, n. 2 (1985); accord, Edelman v. Jordan, 415 U. S. 651, 660 (1974).
C
The Court has been consistent in interpreting the adoption of the Eleventh Amendment as conclusive evidence “that the decision in Chisholm was contrary to the well-understood meaning of the Constitution,” Seminole Tribe, 517 U. S., at 69, and that the views expressed by Hamilton, Madison, and Marshall during the ratification debates, and by Justice Ire-dell in his dissenting opinion in Chisholm, reflect the original understanding of the Constitution. See, e.g., Hans, 134 U. S., at 12, 14-15, 18-19; Principality of Monaco, 292 U. S., at 325; Edelman, supra, at 660, n. 9; Seminole Tribe, supra, at 70, and nn. 12-13. In accordance with this understanding, we have recognized a “presumption that no anomalous and unheard-of proceedings or suits were intended to be raised up by the Constitution — anomalous and unheard of when the constitution was adopted.” Hans, 134 U. S., at 18; accord, id., at 15. As a consequence, we have looked to “history and experience, and the established order of things,” id., at 14, rather than “[a]dhering to the mere letter” of the Eleventh Amendment, id., at 13, in determining the scope of the States’ constitutional immunity from suit.
Following this approach, the Court has upheld States’ assertions of sovereign immunity in various contexts falling outside the literal text of the Eleventh Amendment. In Hans, the Court held that sovereign immunity barred a citizen from suing his own State under the federal-question head of jurisdiction. The Court was unmoved by the petitioner’s argument that the Eleventh Amendment, by its terms, applied only to suits brought by citizens of other States:
“It seems to us that these views of those great advocates and defenders of the Constitution were most sensible and just; and they apply equally to the present ease as to that then under discussion. The letter is appealed to now, as it was then, as a ground for sustaining a suit brought by an individual against a State. The reason against it is as strong in this ease as it was in that. It is an attempt to strain the Constitution and the law to a construction never imagined or dreamed of.” Id., at 14-15.
Later decisions rejected similar requests to conform the principle of sovereign immunity to the strict language of the Eleventh Amendment in holding that nonconsenting States are immune from suits brought by federal corporations, Smith v. Reeves, 178 U. S. 436 (1900), foreign nations, Principality of Monaco, supra, or Indian tribes, Blatchford v. Native Village of Noatak, 501 U. S. 775 (1991), and in concluding that sovereign immunity is a defense to suits in admiralty, though the text of the Eleventh Amendment addresses only suits “in law or equity,” Ex parte New York, 256 U. S. 490 (1921).
These holdings reflect a settled doctrinal understanding, consistent with the views of the leading advocates of the Constitution’s ratification, that sovereign immunity derives not from the Eleventh Amendment but from the structure of the original Constitution itself. See, e. g., Idaho v. Coeur d’Alene Tribe of Idaho, 521 U. S. 261, 267-268 (1997) (acknowledging “the broader concept of immunity, implicit in the Constitution, which we have regarded the Eleventh Amendment as evidencing and exemplifying”); Seminole Tribe, supra, at 55-56; Pennhurst State School and Hospital v. Halderman, 465 U. S. 89, 98-99 (1984); Ex parte New York, supra, at 497. The Eleventh Amendment confirmed, rather than established, sovereign immunity as a constitutional principle; it follows that the scope of the States’ immunity from suit is demarcated not by the text of the Amendment alone but by fundamental postulates implicit in the constitutional design. As we explained in Principality of Monaco:
“Manifestly, we cannot rest with a mere literal application of the words of §2 of Article III, or assume that the letter of the Eleventh Amendment exhausts the restrictions upon suits against non-consenting States. Behind the words of the constitutional provisions are postulates which limit and control. There is the essential postulate that the controversies, as contemplated, shall be found to be of a justiciable character. There is also the postulate that States of the Union, still possessing attributes of sovereignty, shall be immune from suits, without their consent, save where there has been ‘a surrender of this immunity in the plan of the convention.’ ” 292 U. S., at 322-323 (quoting The Federalist No. 81 (footnote omitted).
Or, as we have more recently reaffirmed:
“Although the text of the Amendment would appear to restrict only the Article III diversity jurisdiction of the federal courts, ‘we have understood the Eleventh Amendment to stand not so much for what it says, but for the presupposition... which it confirms.’ Blatchford v. Native Village of Noatak, 501 U. S. 775, 779 (1991). That presupposition, first observed over a century ago in Hans v. Louisiana, 134 U. S. 1 (1890), has two parts: first, that each State is a sovereign entity in our federal system; and second, that ‘ “[i]t is inherent in the nature of sovereignty not to be amenable to the suit of an individual without its consent,” ’ id., at 13 (emphasis deleted), quoting The Federalist No. 81, p. 487....” Seminole Tribe, supra, at 54.
Accord, Puerto Rico Aqueduct and Sewer Authority v. Metcalf & Eddy

Question: What type of decision did the court make?
A. opinion of the court (orally argued)
B. per curiam (no oral argument)
C. decrees
D. equally divided vote
E. per curiam (orally argued)
F. judgment of the Court (orally argued)
G. seriatim
Answer:

Answer: A