90
Stevens, J., dissenting
prudence, see, e. g., Atascadero State Hospital v. Scanlon, 473 U. S., at 238-239; Hoffman v. Connecticut Dept. of Income Maintenance, 492 U. S. 96 (1989), I would have thought that Hans and Monaco had at least left open the question whether Congress could permit the suit we consider here. Our clear-statement cases would have been all but unintelligible if Hans and Monaco had already established that Congress lacked the constitutional power to make States suable in federal court by individuals no matter how clear its intention to do so.12
Finally, the particular nature of the federal question involved in Hans renders the majority's reliance upon its rule even less defensible. Hans deduced its rebuttable presumption in favor of sovereign immunity largely on the basis of its extensive analysis of cases holding that the sovereign could not be forced to make good on its debts via a private suit. See Louisiana v. Jumel, 107 U. S. 711 (1883); Hagood v. Southern, 117 U. S. 52 (1886); In re Ayers, 123 U. S. 443 (1887). Because Hans, like these other cases, involved a suit that attempted to make a State honor its debt, its holding need not be read to stand even for the relatively limited proposition that there is a presumption in favor of sovereign immunity in all federal-question cases.13
12 Moreover, they would have most unnecessarily burdened Congress. For example, after deciding that Congress had not made sufficiently explicit its intention to withdraw the state sovereign immunity defense in certain bankruptcy actions, see Hoffman v. Connecticut Dept. of Income Maintenance, 392 U. S. 96 (1989), Congress understandably concluded that it could correct the confusion by amending the relevant statute to make its intentions to override such a defense unmistakably clear. See In re Merchants Grain, Inc., 59 F. 3d 630 (CA7 1995). Congress will no doubt be surprised to learn that its exercise in legislative clarification, which it undertook for our benefit, was for naught because the Constitution makes it so.
13 Significantly, Chief Justice Marshall understood the Eleventh Amendment's bar to have been designed primarily to protect States from being sued for their debts. See Cohens v. Virginia, 6 Wheat. 264, 406 (1821).
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