Cite as: 518 U. S. 839 (1996)
Opinion of Souter, J.
The Government argues that enforcement of the contracts in this case would implicate the unmistakability principle, with the consequence that Merrion, Bowen, and Cherokee Nation are good authorities for rejecting respondents' claims. The Government's position is mistaken, however, for the complementary reasons that the contracts have not been construed as binding the Government's exercise of authority to modify banking regulation or of any other sovereign power, and there has been no demonstration that awarding damages for breach would be tantamount to any such limitation.
As construed by each of the courts that considered these contracts before they reached us, the agreements do not purport to bind the Congress from enacting regulatory measures, and respondents do not ask the courts to infer from silence any such limit on sovereign power as would violate the holdings of Merrion and Cherokee Nation. The contracts have been read as solely risk-shifting agreements and respondents seek nothing more than the benefit of promises by the Government to insure them against any losses arising from future regulatory change. They seek no injunction against application of the law to them, as the plaintiffs did in Bowen and Merrion, cf. Reichelderfer v. Quinn, 287 U. S. 315 (1932), and they acknowledge that the Bank Board and FSLIC could not bind Congress (and possibly could not even bind their future selves) not to change regulatory policy.
Nor do the damages respondents seek amount to exemption from the new law, in the manner of the compensation sought in Bowen, see 477 U. S., at 51. Once general jurisdiction to make an award against the Government is conceded, a requirement to pay money supposes no surrender of sovereign power by a sovereign with the power to contract. See, e. g., Amino Bros. Co. v. United States, 178 Ct. Cl. 515, 525, 372 F. 2d 485, 491 ("The Government cannot make a binding contract that it will not exercise a sovereign power, but it can agree in a contract that if it does so, it will pay the other
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