Cite as: 527 U. S. 666 (1999)
Opinion of the Court
First, Justice Breyer and the other dissenters have adopted a decidedly perverse theory of stare decisis. While finding themselves entirely unconstrained by a venerable precedent such as Hans, embedded within our legal system for over a century, see, e. g., Welch, 483 U. S., at 494, n. 27; Union Gas, supra, at 34-35 (Scalia, J., dissenting), at the same time they cling desperately to an anomalous and severely undermined decision (Parden) from the 1960's. Surely this approach to stare decisis is exactly backwards— unless, of course, one wishes to use it as a weapon rather than a guide, in which case any old approach will do. Second, while we stress that the following observation has no bearing upon our resolution of this case, we find it puzzling that Justice Breyer would choose this occasion to criticize our sovereign-immunity jurisprudence as being ungrounded in constitutional text, since the present lawsuit that he would allow to go forward—having apparently been commenced against a State (Florida) by a citizen of another State (College Savings Bank of New Jersey), 948 F. Supp., at 401-402— seems to fall foursquare within the literal text of the Eleventh Amendment: "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 . . . ." U. S. Const., Amdt. 11 (emphasis added). See Seminole Tribe, supra, at 82, n. 8 (Stevens, J., dissenting).
As for the more diffuse treatment of the subject of federalism contained in the last portion of Justice Breyer's opinion: It is alarming to learn that so many Members of this Court subscribe to a theory of federalism that rejects "the details of any particular federalist doctrine"—which it says can and should "change to reflect the Nation's changing needs"—and that puts forward as the only "unchanging goal" of federalism worth mentioning "the protection of liberty," which it believes is most directly achieved by "promoting the sharing among citizens of governmental decisionmaking
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