42
Stevens, J., dissenting
Court's view that waivers of sovereign immunity must be strictly construed.6 I shall not comment on the plausible alternatives except to note that they are obviously less satisfactory—both as a matter of sound bankruptcy policy and as a principled interpretation of the English language—than a literal reading of the statute. I shall, however, add a few words about the Court's love affair with the doctrine of sovereign immunity.
II
Despite its ancient lineage, the doctrine of sovereign immunity is nothing but a judge-made rule that is sometimes favored 7 and sometimes disfavored.8 Its original reliance on the notion that a divinely ordained monarch "can do no wrong" 9 is, of course, thoroughly discredited.10 Moreover,
6 Ante, at 34.
7 See, e. g., Library of Congress v. Shaw, 478 U. S. 310, 318 (1986) (" 'The consent necessary to waive the traditional immunity must be express, and it must be strictly construed' ") (quoting United States v. N. Y. Rayon Importing Co., 329 U. S. 654, 659 (1947)); Ruckelshaus v. Sierra Club, 463 U. S. 680, 685 (1983) ("Waivers of immunity must be 'construed strictly in favor of the sovereign,' . . . and not 'enlarge[d] . . . beyond what the language requires' "); United States v. Sherwood, 312 U. S. 584, 590 (1941) (Because "a relinquishment of a sovereign immunity . . . must be strictly interpreted," we construe the statutory language with "conservatism").
8 See, e. g., Block v. Neal, 460 U. S. 289, 298 (1983) (" 'The exemption of the sovereign from suit involves hardship enough where consent has been withheld. We are not to add to its rigor by refinement of construction where consent has been announced' ") (quoting Anderson v. Hayes Constr. Co., 243 N. Y. 140, 147, 153 N. E. 28, 29-30 (1926) (Cardozo, J.)); Indian Towing Co. v. United States, 350 U. S. 61, 69 (1955) (Frankfurter, J.) (Court should not be "a self-constituted guardian of the Treasury [and] import immunity back into a statute designed to limit it"); Canadian Aviator, Ltd. v. United States, 324 U. S. 215, 222 (1945) (Court should not thwart the "broad statutory language authorizing suit" against the United States with "an unduly restrictive interpretation").
9 See 1 W. Blackstone, Commentaries *246.
10 See, e. g., Nevada v. Hall, 440 U. S. 410, 415 (1979) (the fiction that the king could do no wrong "was rejected by the colonists when they declared
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