Cite as: 521 U. S. 261 (1997)
Opinion of O’Connor, J.
regulate uses of the land. Here, the Tribe seeks a declaration not only that the State does not own the bed of Lake Coeur d'Alene, but also that the lands are not within the State's sovereign jurisdiction. Whatever distinction can be drawn between possession and ownership of real property in other contexts, it is not possible to make such a distinction for submerged lands. For this reason, Lee, Tindal, and analogous cases do not control here. In my view, because a ruling in the Tribe's favor, in practical effect, would be indistinguishable from an order granting the Tribe title to submerged lands, the Young exception to the Eleventh Amendment's bar is not properly invoked here.
While I therefore agree that the Tribe's suit must be dismissed, I believe that the principal opinion is flawed in several respects. In concluding that the Tribe's suit cannot proceed, the principal opinion reasons that federal courts determining whether to exercise jurisdiction over any suit against a state officer must engage in a case-specific analysis of a number of concerns, including whether a state forum is available to hear the dispute, what particular federal right the suit implicates, and whether "special factors counse[l] hesitation" in the exercise of jurisdiction. Ante, at 274, 275, 278-280 (internal quotation marks omitted). This approach unnecessarily recharacterizes and narrows much of our Young jurisprudence. The parties have not briefed whether such a shift in the Young doctrine is warranted. In my view, it is not.
The principal opinion begins by examining this Court's early Young cases and concludes that the Court found the exercise of federal jurisdiction proper in those cases principally because no state forum was available to vindicate a plaintiff's claim that state officers were violating federal law. Ante, at 270-274. But the principal opinion cites not a single case in which the Court expressly relied on the absence of an available state forum as a rationale for applying Young. Instead, the principal opinion invokes language in
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