Cite as: 521 U. S. 261 (1997)
Souter, J., dissenting
to a state forum able to grant the relief sought. But this is mistaken in theory and contrary to practice.
Federal-question jurisdiction turns on subject matter, not the need to do some job a state court may wish to avoid; it addresses not the adequacy of a state judicial system, but the responsibility of federal courts to vindicate what is supposed to be controlling federal law. See Green v. Mansour, 474 U. S., at 68 ("[T]he availability of prospective relief of the sort awarded in Ex parte Young gives life to the Supremacy Clause. Remedies designed to end a continuing violation of federal law are necessary to vindicate the federal interest in assuring the supremacy of that law"); Pennhurst, supra, at 105 ("[T]he Young doctrine has been accepted as necessary to permit the federal courts to vindicate federal rights and hold state officials responsible to the supreme authority of the United States. . . . Our decisions repeatedly have emphasized that the Young doctrine rests on the need to promote the vindication of federal rights" (citations and internal quotation marks omitted)). See also Haring v. Prosise, 462 U. S. 306, 322-323 (1983) (rejecting proposed rule that would relegate certain § 1983 claims to state court in the face of the statute's basic policy of providing a federal forum for vindication of federal rights).11
11 Many federal cases with nondiverse parties, of course, might well have been brought as state cases if state relief could reasonably have been expected. Section 1983, for example, reflects the "grave congressional concern that the state courts had been deficient in protecting federal rights." Allen v. McCurry, 449 U. S. 90, 98-99 (1980) (citations omitted). See also Patsy v. Board of Regents of Fla., 457 U. S. 496, 503-507 (1982); American Law Institute, Study of the Division of Jurisdiction Between State and Federal Courts 168 (1968). And when the plaintiff suing the state officers has been an Indian tribe, the readiness of the state courts to vindicate the federal right has been less than perfect. Cf. United States v. Kagama, 118 U. S. 375, 384 (1886) ("Because of the local ill feeling, the people of the States where [the Indians] are found are often their deadliest enemies"); Comment, Oneida Nation v. County of Oneida: Tribal Rights of Action and the Indian Trade and Intercourse Act, 84 Colum. L. Rev. 1852, 1858- 1859 (1984) ("State courts . . . were generally hostile to tribal plaintiffs,
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