Cite as: 517 U. S. 44 (1996)
Stevens, J., dissenting
nity. Our abstention doctrines have roots in both the Tenth Amendment and Article III, and thus may be said to rest on constitutional "postulates" or to partake of jurisdictional aspects. Yet it has not been thought that the Constitution would prohibit Congress from barring federal courts from abstaining. The majority offers no reason for making the federal common-law rule of sovereign immunity less susceptible to congressional displacement than any other quasi-jurisdictional common-law rule.
In this regard, I note that Monaco itself analogized sovereign immunity to the prudential doctrine that "controversies" identified in Article III must be "justiciable" in order to be heard by federal courts. Id., at 329. The justiciability doctrine is a prudential rather than a jurisdictional one, and thus Congress' clearly expressed intention to create federal jurisdiction over a particular Article III controversy necessarily strips federal courts of the authority to decline jurisdiction on justiciability grounds. See Allen v. Wright, 468 U. S. 737, 791 (1984) (Stevens, J., dissenting); Flast v. Cohen, 392 U. S. 83, 100-101 (1968). For that reason, Monaco, by its own terms, fails to resolve the question before us.11
More generally, it is quite startling to learn that the reasoning of Hans and Monaco (even assuming that it did not undermine the majority's view) should have a stare decisis effect on the question whether Congress possesses the authority to provide a federal forum for the vindication of a federal right by a citizen against its own State. In light of the Court's development of a "clear-statement" line of juris-11 Indeed, to the extent the reasoning of Monaco was premised on the ground that a contrary ruling might permit foreign governments and States indirectly to frustrate Congress' treaty power, 292 U. S., at 331, the opinion suggests that its outcome would have been quite different had Congress expressly authorized suits by foreign governments against individual States as part of its administration of foreign policy.
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