Cite as: 521 U. S. 261 (1997)
Opinion of the Court
II
A
The grant of federal judicial power is cast in terms of its reach or extent. Article III, § 2, of the Constitution provides the "judicial Power shall extend" to the cases it enumerates, including "all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution [and] the Laws of the United States." The Eleventh Amendment, too, employs the term "extend." It provides:
"The Judicial power of the United States shall not be construed to extend to any suit in law or equity, commenced or prosecuted against one of the United States by Citizens of another State, or by Citizens or Subjects of any Foreign State."
This point of commonality could suggest that the Eleventh Amendment, like the grant of Article III, § 2, jurisdiction, is cast in terms of reach or competence, so the federal courts are altogether disqualified from hearing certain suits brought against a State. This interpretation, however, has been neither our tradition nor the accepted construction of the Amendment's text. Rather, a State can waive its Eleventh Amendment protection and allow a federal court to hear and decide a case commenced or prosecuted against it. The Amendment, in other words, enacts a sovereign immunity from suit, rather than a nonwaivable limit on the Federal Judiciary's subject-matter jurisdiction. The immunity is one the States enjoy save where there has been " 'a surrender of this immunity in the plan of the convention.' " Principality of Monaco v. Mississippi, 292 U. S. 313, 322-323 (1934) (quoting The Federalist No. 81).
The Court's recognition of sovereign immunity has not been limited to the suits described in the text of the Eleventh Amendment. To respect the broader concept of immunity, implicit in the Constitution, which we have regarded
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