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Opinion of the Court
ated to alter the pre-existing balance between state and federal power achieved by Article III and the Eleventh Amendment. Id., at 454. As the dissent in Union Gas made clear, Fitzpatrick cannot be read to justify "limitation of the principle embodied in the Eleventh Amendment through appeal to antecedent provisions of the Constitution." Union Gas, supra, at 42 (Scalia, J., dissenting).
In the five years since it was decided, Union Gas has proved to be a solitary departure from established law. See Puerto Rico Aqueduct and Sewer Authority v. Metcalf & Eddy, Inc., 506 U. S. 139 (1993). Reconsidering the decision in Union Gas, we conclude that none of the policies underlying stare decisis require our continuing adherence to its holding. The decision has, since its issuance, been of questionable precedential value, largely because a majority of the Court expressly disagreed with the rationale of the plurality. See Nichols v. United States, 511 U. S. 738, 746 (1994) (the "degree of confusion following a splintered decision . . . is itself a reason for reexamining that decision"). The case involved the interpretation of the Constitution and therefore may be altered only by constitutional amendment or revision by this Court. Finally, both the result in Union Gas and the plurality's rationale depart from our established understanding of the Eleventh Amendment and undermine the accepted function of Article III. We feel bound to conclude that Union Gas was wrongly decided and that it should be, and now is, overruled.
The dissent makes no effort to defend the decision in Union Gas, see post, at 100, but nonetheless would find congressional power to abrogate in this case.11 Contending that our decision is a novel extension of the Eleventh Amendment, the dissent chides us for "attend[ing]" to dicta. We adhere in this case, however, not to mere obiter dicta, but rather to the well-established rationale upon which the
11 Unless otherwise indicated, all references to the dissent are to the dissenting opinion authored by Justice Souter.
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