88
Stevens, J., dissenting
U. S. 388 (1971). See Mitchell v. Forsyth, 472 U. S. 511 (1985); Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U. S. 800 (1982). Similarly, our cases recognizing qualified officer immunity in 42 U. S. C. § 1983 actions rest on the conclusion that, in passing that statute, Congress did not intend to displace the common-law immunity that officers would have retained under suits premised solely on the general jurisdictional statute. See Tower v. Glover, 467 U. S. 914, 920 (1984). For that reason, the federal common law of officer immunity that Congress meant to incorporate, not a contrary state immunity, applies in § 1983 cases. See Martinez v. California, 444 U. S. 277, 284 (1980). There is no reason why Congress' undoubted power to displace those common-law immunities should be either greater or lesser than its power to displace the common-law sovereign immunity defense.
Some of our precedents do state that the sovereign immunity doctrine rests on fundamental constitutional "postulates" and partakes of jurisdictional aspects rooted in Article III. See ante, at 67-70. Most notably, that reasoning underlies this Court's holding in Principality of Monaco v. Mississippi, 292 U. S. 313 (1934).
Monaco is a most inapt precedent for the majority's holding today. That case barred a foreign sovereign from suing a State in an equitable state-law action to recover payments due on state bonds. It did not, however, involve a claim based on federal law. Instead, the case concerned a purely state-law question to which the State had interposed a federal defense. Id., at 317. Thus, Monaco reveals little about the power of Congress to create a private federal cause of action to remedy a State's violation of federal law.
Moreover, although Monaco attributes a quasi-constitutional status to sovereign immunity, even in cases not covered by the Eleventh Amendment's plain text, that characterization does not constitute precedent for the proposition that Congress is powerless to displace a State's immu-
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