Cite as: 517 U. S. 44 (1996)
Souter, J., dissenting
not bound by the law's provisions; the other provides that the King or Crown, as the font of justice, is not subject to suit in its own courts. See, e. g., Jaffe, Suits Against Governments and Officers: Sovereign Immunity, 77 Harv. L. Rev. 1, 3-4 (1963).2 The one rule limits the reach of substantive law; the other, the jurisdiction of the courts. We are concerned here only with the latter rule, which took its common-law form in the high Middle Ages. "At least as early as the thirteenth century, during the reign of Henry III (1216-1272), it was recognized that the king could not be sued in his own courts." C. Jacobs, Eleventh Amendment and Sovereign Immunity 5 (1972). See also 3 W. Blackstone, Commentaries *244-*245; Jaffe, supra, at 2 ("By the time of Bracton (1268) it was settled doctrine that the King could not be sued eo nomine in his own courts").
The significance of this doctrine in the nascent American law is less clear, however, than its early development and steady endurance in England might suggest. While some colonial governments may have enjoyed some such immunity, Jacobs, supra, at 6-7, the scope (and even the existence) of this governmental immunity in pre-Revolutionary America remains disputed. See Gibbons, The Eleventh Amendment and State Sovereign Immunity: A Reinterpretation, 83 Colum. L. Rev. 1889, 1895-1899 (1983).
2 The first of these notions rests on the ancient maxim that "the King can do no wrong." See, e. g., 1 W. Blackstone, Commentaries *244. Professor Jaffe has argued this expression "originally meant precisely the contrary to what it later came to mean," that is, " 'it meant that the king must not, was not allowed, not entitled, to do wrong.' " Jaffe, 77 Harv. L. Rev., at 4 (quoting L. Ehrlich, Proceedings Against the Crown (1216-1377), p. 42, in 6 Oxford Studies in Social and Legal History (P. Vinogradoff ed. 1921), p. 42); see also 1 Blackstone, supra, at *246 (interpreting the maxim to mean that "the prerogative of the crown extends not to do any injury"). In any event, it is clear that the idea of the sovereign, or any part of it, being above the law in this sense has not survived in American law. See, e. g., Langford v. United States, 101 U. S. 341, 342-343 (1880); Nevada v. Hall, 440 U. S. 410, 415 (1979).
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