92
Stevens, J., dissenting
judicially resisted; and any law impairing the obligation of contracts under which such property or rights are held is void and powerless to affect their enjoyment." Hans v. Louisiana, 134 U. S., at 20-21.
That conclusion casts doubt on the absolutist view that Hans definitively establishes that Article III prohibits federal courts from entertaining federal-question suits brought against States by their own citizens. At the very least, Hans suggests that such suits may be brought to enjoin States from impairing existing contractual obligations.
The view that the rule of Hans is more substantive than jurisdictional comports with Hamilton's famous discussion of sovereign immunity in The Federalist Papers. Hamilton offered his view that the federal judicial power would not extend to suits against unconsenting States only in the context of his contention that no contract with a State could be enforceable against the State's desire. He did not argue that a State's immunity from suit in federal court would be absolute.
"[T]here is no color to pretend that the State governments would, by the adoption of [the plan of convention], be divested of the privilege of paying their own debts in their own way, free from every constraint but that which flows from the obligations of good faith. The contracts between a nation and individuals are only binding on the conscience of the sovereign, and have no pretensions to a compulsive force. They confer no right of action independent of the sovereign will." The Federalist No. 81, p. 488 (C. Rossiter ed. 1961).
Here, of course, no question of a State's contractual obligations is presented. The Seminole Tribe's only claim is that the State of Florida has failed to fulfill a duty to negotiate that federal statutory law alone imposes. Neither the Fed-
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