68
Opinion of the Court
sought to be prosecuted against a State, without her consent, by one of her own citizens. . . .
"Manifestly, 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. Behind the words of the constitutional provisions are postulates which limit and control. There is the essential postulate that the controversies, as contemplated, shall be found to be of a justiciable character. There is also the postulate that States of the Union, still possessing attributes of sovereignty, shall be immune from suits, without their consent, save where there has been a 'surrender of this immunity in the plan of the convention.' " Id., at 321-323 (citations and footnote omitted).
See id., at 329-330; see also Pennhurst, 465 U. S., at 98 ("In short, the principle of sovereign immunity is a constitutional limitation on the federal judicial power established in Art. III"); Ex parte New York, 256 U. S., at 497 ("[T]he entire judicial power granted by the Constitution does not embrace authority to entertain a suit brought by private parties against a State without consent given . . ."). It is true that we have not had occasion previously to apply established Eleventh Amendment principles to the question whether Congress has the power to abrogate state sovereign immunity (save in Union Gas). But consideration of that question must proceed with fidelity to this century-old doctrine.
The dissent, to the contrary, disregards our case law in favor of a theory cobbled together from law review articles and its own version of historical events. The dissent cites not a single decision since Hans (other than Union Gas) that supports its view of state sovereign immunity, instead relying upon the now-discredited decision in Chisholm v. Georgia, 2 Dall. 419 (1793). See, e. g., post, at 152, n. 47. Its undocumented and highly speculative extralegal explanation of
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