Cite as: 521 U. S. 261 (1997)
Souter, J., dissenting
sought would be indistinguishable in practice from a decree quieting title. See ante, at 281 ("Tribe's suit is the functional equivalent of a quiet title action which implicates special sovereignty interests"); ante, at 282 (relief sought is "close to the functional equivalent of quiet title"); ante, at 289 (opinion of O’Connor, J.) ("suit is the functional equivalent of an action to quiet its title"). If this argument were to the point it would, to begin with, render erroneous the holdings in Treasure Salvors, for example, and Lee (as interpreted by Larson, 337 U. S., at 696-697).9 In each of those cases, too, the individual plaintiffs' success against state officers was an aspersion on the government's claim of title. But a consideration of the alternatives shows why such aspersion was rightly accepted as a fair price to pay for the jurisdiction to consider individual claims of federal right in those two title cases, as it has been accepted generally. The one alternative, of settling the matter of title by compelling the State itself to appear in a federal-question suit, is barred by Eleventh Amendment doctrine. See, e. g., Seminole Tribe, 517 U. S., at 54; Alabama v. Pugh, 438 U. S. 781, 782 (1978) (per curiam); Chandler v. Dix, 194 U. S. 590, 591 (1904). The
9 Justice O’Connor says that Treasure Salvors is inapposite because the plurality's discussion of the property claim there, in her view, focused on whether the state officials were acting ultra vires state-law authority, see ante, at 289-290. But the plurality's analysis in Treasure Salvors was not so limited, and noted that the plaintiff salvage company claimed that Florida state officials lacked authority to retain treasure recovered from the sunken galleon because the galleon had been found on submerged land belonging to the United States, not Florida, as determined under the Submerged Lands Act, § 2(b), 67 Stat. 29, 43 U. S. C. § 1301(b), and our decision in United States v. Florida, 425 U. S. 791 (1976). See Treasure Salvors, 458 U. S., at 676, and n. 5. While the plurality noted further that the company claimed that the state officials lacked authority under state law to retain the treasure, see id., at 692-693, there was no question that the company claimed ownership of the treasure under federal law. Accordingly, I disagree both that Treasure Salvors is inapplicable and that its reasoning was "narrowed" by Pennhurst State School and Hospital v. Halderman, 465 U. S. 89 (1984). Cf. ante, at 290 (opinion of O’Connor, J.).
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