Cite as: 517 U. S. 44 (1996)
Stevens, J., dissenting
diction of the Court in those cases, because it might be
essential to the preservation of peace." Ibid.17
Nevertheless, this Court later put forth the interest in preventing "indignity" as the "very object and purpose of the [Eleventh] Amendment." In re Ayers, 123 U. S., at 505. That, of course, is an "embarrassingly insufficient" rationale for the rule. See Puerto Rico Aqueduct and Sewer Authority v. Metcalf & Eddy, Inc., 506 U. S. 139, 151 (1993) (Stevens, J., dissenting).
Moreover, I find unsatisfying Justice Holmes' explanation that "[a] sovereign is exempt from suit, not because of any formal conception or obsolete theory, but on the logical and practical ground that there can be no legal right as against the authority that makes the law on which the right depends." Kawananakoa v. Polyblank, 205 U. S. 349, 353 (1907). As I have explained before, Justice Holmes' justification fails in at least two respects.
"First, it is nothing more than a restatement of the obvious proposition that a citizen may not sue the sovereign unless the sovereign has violated the citizen's legal rights. It cannot explain application of the immunity defense in cases like Chisholm, in which it is assumed that the plaintiff's rights have in fact been violated— and those cases are, of course, the only ones in which the immunity defense is needed. Second, Holmes's statement does not purport to explain why a general grant of jurisdiction to federal courts should not be treated as an adequate expression of the sovereign's consent to suits against itself as well as to suits against
17 Interestingly, this passage demonstrates that the Court's application of a common-law sovereign immunity defense in Principality of Monaco v. Mississippi, 292 U. S. 313 (1934), was quite probably justified. There a foreign state sued a State as a substantial creditor, and thus implicated the very purpose of the Eleventh Amendment.
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