124
Souter, J., dissenting
cannot bar a federal-question suit against a State brought by a state citizen. See, e. g., Edelman v. Jordan, 415 U. S. 651, 662 (1974) (acknowledging that "the Amendment by its terms does not bar suits against a State by its own citizens").18 Indeed, as I have noted, Justice Bradley's opinion in Hans conceded that Hans might successfully have pursued his claim "if there were no other reason or ground [other than the Amendment itself] for abating his suit." 134 U. S., at 10. The Hans Court, rather, held the suit barred by a non-constitutional common-law immunity. See supra, at 116-117.
The "rationale" which the majority seeks to invoke is, I think, more nearly stated in its quotation from Principality of Monaco v. Mississippi, 292 U. S. 313, 321-323 (1934). There, the Court said that "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." Id., at 322.19 This statement certainly is true to Hans, which
18 See also Georgia Railroad & Banking Co. v. Redwine, 342 U. S. 299, 304 (1952) (same); Fitts v. McGhee, 172 U. S. 516, 524 (1899) (same). Even Justice Scalia's dissent in Union Gas, the reasoning of which the majority adopts today, acknowledged that its view of sovereign immunity depended upon "some other constitutional principle beyond the immediate text of the Eleventh Amendment." 491 U. S., at 31 (opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part). To the extent that our prior cases do refer to Hans immunity as part of the Eleventh Amendment, they can only be referring to Justice Stevens's "other" Eleventh Amendment. Hess v. Port Authority Trans-Hudson Corporation, 513 U. S. 30, 53 (1994) (Stevens, J., concurring); see also Pennsylvania v. Union Gas Co., supra, at 23-29 (Stevens, J., concurring) (same).
19 See also Union Gas, 491 U. S., at 31-32 (Scalia, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part) ("What we said in Hans was, essentially, that the Eleventh Amendment was important not merely for what it said but for what it reflected: a consensus that the doctrine of sovereign immunity, for States as well as for the Federal Government, was part of the understood background against which the Constitution was adopted, and which its jurisdictional provisions did not mean to sweep away"); Nevada v. Hall, 440 U. S., at 440 (Rehnquist, J., dissenting) (interpreting Monaco as
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