Opinion ID: 112641
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Eleventh Amendment provides as follows:

Text: 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 Citizens of another State, or by Citizens or Subjects of any Foreign State. Despite the narrowness of its terms, since Hans v. Louisiana, 134 U. S. 1 (1890), we have understood the Eleventh Amendment to stand not so much for what it says, but for the presupposition of our constitutional structure which it confirms: that the States entered the federal system with their sovereignty intact; that the judicial authority in Article III is limited by this sovereignty, Welch v. Texas Dept. of Highways and Public Transportation, 483 U. S. 468, 472 (1987) (plurality opinion); Employees of Dept. of Public Health and Welfare of Mo. v. Department of Public Health and Welfare of Mo., 411 U. S. 279, 290-294 (1973) (MARSHALL, J., concurring in result); and that a State will therefore not be subject to suit in federal court unless it has consented to suit, either expressly or in the plan of the convention. See Port Authority Trans-Hudson Corp. v. Feeney, 495 U. S. 299, 304 (1990); Welch, supra, at 474 (plurality opinion); Atascadero State Hospital v. Scanlon, 473 U. S. 234, 238 (1985); Pennhurst State School and Hospital v. Halderman, 465 U. S. 89, 99 (1984). Respondents do not ask us to revisit Hans; instead they argue that the traditional principles of immunity presumed by Hans do not apply to suits by sovereigns like Indian tribes. And even if they did, respondents contend, the States have consented to suits by tribes in the plan of the convention. We consider these points in turn. In arguing that sovereign immunity does not restrict suit by Indian tribes, respondents submit, first, that sovereign immunity only restricts suits by individuals against sovereigns, not by sovereigns against sovereigns, and as we have recognized, Oklahoma Tax Comm'n v. Citizen Band of Potawatomi Tribe of Okla., 498 U. S. 505, 509 (1991), Indian tribes are sovereigns. Respondents' conception of the nature of sovereign immunity finds some support both in the apparent understanding of the Founders and in dicta of our own opinions. [1] But whatever the reach or meaning of these early statements, the notion that traditional principles of sovereign immunity only restrict suits by individuals was rejected in Principality of Monaco v. Mississippi, 292 U. S. 313 (1934). It is with that opinion, and the conception of sovereignty that it embraces, that we must begin. In Monaco, the Principality had come into possession of Mississippi state bonds, and had sued Mississippi in federal court to recover amounts due under those bonds. Mississippi defended on grounds of the Eleventh Amendment, among others. Had respondents' understanding of sovereign immunity been the Court's, the Eleventh Amendment would not have limited the otherwise clear grant of jurisdiction in Article III to hear controversies between a State ... and foreign States. But we held that it did. 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 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.' The Federalist, No. 81. Monaco, supra, at 322-323 (footnote omitted). Our clear assumption in Monaco was that sovereign immunity extends against both individuals and sovereigns, so that there must be found inherent in the plan of the convention a surrender by the States of immunity as to either. Because we perceived in the plan no ground upon which it can be said that any waiver or consent by a State of the Union has run in favor of a foreign State, id., at 330, we concluded that foreign states were still subject to the immunity of the States. We pursue the same inquiry in the present case, and thus confront respondents' second contention: that the States waived their immunity against Indian tribes when they adopted the Constitution. Just as in Monaco with regard to foreign sovereigns, so also here with regard to Indian tribes, there is no compelling evidence that the Founders thought such a surrender inherent in the constitutional compact. [2] We have hitherto found a surrender of immunity against particular litigants in only two contexts: suits by sister States, South Dakota v. North Carolina, 192 U. S. 286, 318 (1904), and suits by the United States, United States v. Texas, 143 U. S. 621 (1892). We have not found a surrender by the United States to suit by the States, Kansas v. United States, 204 U. S. 331, 342 (1907); see Jackson, The Supreme Court, the Eleventh Amendment, and State Sovereign Immunity, 98 Yale L. J. 1, 79-80 (1988), nor, again, a surrender by the States to suit by foreign sovereigns, Monaco, supra. Respondents argne that Indian tribes are more like States than foreign sovereigns. That is true in some respects: They are, for example, domestic. The relevant difference between States and foreign sovereigns, however, is not domesticity, but the role of each in the convention within which the surrender of immunity was for the former, but not for the latter, implicit. What makes the States' surrender of immunity from suit by sister States plausible is the mutuality of that concession. There is no such mutuality with either foreign sovereigns or Indian tribes. We have repeatedly held that Indian tribes enjoy immunity against suits by States, Potawatomi Tribe, supra, at 509, as it would be absurd to suggest that the tribes surrendered immunity in a convention to which they were not even parties. But if the convention could not surrender the tribes' immunity for the benefit of the States, we do not believe that it surrendered the States' immunity for the benefit of the tribes.