154
Souter, J., dissenting
that state governments were subject to a superior regime of law in a judicial system established, not by the State, but by the people through a specific delegation of their sovereign power to a National Government that was paramount within its delegated sphere. When individuals sued States to enforce federal rights, the Government that corresponded to the "sovereign" in the traditional common-law sense was not the State but the National Government, and any state immunity from the jurisdiction of the Nation's courts would have required a grant from the true sovereign, the people, in their Constitution, or from the Congress that the Constitution had empowered. We made a similar point in Nevada v. Hall, 440 U. S., at 416, where we considered a suit against a State in another State's courts:
"This [traditional] explanation [of sovereign immunity] adequately supports the conclusion that no sovereign may be sued in its own courts without its consent, but it affords no support for a claim of immunity in another sovereign's courts. Such a claim necessarily implicates the power and authority of a second sovereign; its source must be found either in an agreement, express or implied, between the two sovereigns, or in the voluntary decision of the second to respect the dignity of the first as a matter of comity."
Cf. United States v. Texas, 143 U. S. 621, 646 (1892) (recognizing that a suit by the National Government against a State "does no violence to the inherent nature of sovereignty"). Subjecting States to federal jurisdiction in federal-question cases brought by individuals thus reflected nothing more than Professor Amar's apt summary that "[w]here governments are acting within the bounds of their delegated 'sovereign' power, they may partake of sovereign immunity; where
will. . . . It follows of necessity that the king cannot be subject to his own laws").
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