Quote image editor
“A coherent vision of blanket state sovereign immunity virtually compels the results in Hans [v. Louisiana, 134 U.S. 1 (1890)] and Ex parte New York [256 U.S. 490 (1921)]; if noncitizen suits are barred in law and equity, there is simply no good reason not to extend sovereign immunity to citizen and admiralty suits. The problem, of course, is that the results in Hans and Ex parte New York contradict the unambiguous limitations of the Eleventh Amendment's text—a contradiction that suggests the clear error of the Supreme Court's first interpretive premise that the Amendment is in fact concerned with sovereign immunity. If coherence of general sovereign immunity doctrine is achieved only by mangling the Amendment's text, the obvious lesson should be that the Amendment was not designed to embody any such doctrine.” — Akhil Reed Amar