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Opinion of the Court
terms, applied only to suits brought by citizens of other States:
"It seems to us that these views of those great advocates and defenders of the Constitution were most sensible and just; and they apply equally to the present case as to that then under discussion. The letter is appealed to now, as it was then, as a ground for sustaining a suit brought by an individual against a State. The reason against it is as strong in this case as it was in that. It is an attempt to strain the Constitution and the law to a construction never imagined or dreamed of." Id., at 14-15.
Later decisions rejected similar requests to conform the principle of sovereign immunity to the strict language of the Eleventh Amendment in holding that nonconsenting States are immune from suits brought by federal corporations, Smith v. Reeves, 178 U. S. 436 (1900), foreign nations, Principality of Monaco, supra, or Indian tribes, Blatchford v. Native Village of Noatak, 501 U. S. 775 (1991), and in concluding that sovereign immunity is a defense to suits in admiralty, though the text of the Eleventh Amendment addresses only suits "in law or equity," Ex parte New York, 256 U. S. 490 (1921).
These holdings reflect a settled doctrinal understanding, consistent with the views of the leading advocates of the Constitution's ratification, that sovereign immunity derives not from the Eleventh Amendment but from the structure of the original Constitution itself. See, e. g., Idaho v. Coeur d'Alene Tribe of Idaho, 521 U. S. 261, 267-268 (1997) (acknowledging "the broader concept of immunity, implicit in the Constitution, which we have regarded the Eleventh Amendment as evidencing and exemplifying"); Seminole Tribe, supra, at 55-56; Pennhurst State School and Hospital v. Halderman, 465 U. S. 89, 98-99 (1984); Ex parte New York, supra, at 497. The Eleventh Amendment confirmed, rather
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