730
Opinion of the Court
Accord, Puerto Rico Aqueduct and Sewer Authority v. Metcalf & Eddy, Inc., 506 U. S. 139, 146 (1993) ("The Amendment is rooted in a recognition that the States, although a union, maintain certain attributes of sovereignty, including sovereign immunity").
II
In this case we must determine whether Congress has the power, under Article I, to subject nonconsenting States to private suits in their own courts. As the foregoing discussion makes clear, the fact that the Eleventh Amendment by its terms limits only "[t]he Judicial power of the United States" does not resolve the question. To rest on the words of the Amendment alone would be to engage in the type of ahistorical literalism we have rejected in interpreting the scope of the States' sovereign immunity since the discredited decision in Chisholm. Seminole Tribe, 517 U. S., at 68; see also id., at 69 (quoting Principality of Monaco, supra, at 326, in turn quoting Hans, 134 U. S., at 15) ("[W]e long have recognized that blind reliance upon the text of the Eleventh Amendment is ' "to strain the Constitution and the law to a construction never imagined or dreamed of" ' ").
While the constitutional principle of sovereign immunity does pose a bar to federal jurisdiction over suits against nonconsenting States, see, e. g., Principality of Monaco, 292 U. S., at 322-323, this is not the only structural basis of sovereign immunity implicit in the constitutional design. Rather, "[t]here is also the postulate that States of the Union, still possessing attributes of sovereignty, shall be immune from suits, without their consent, save where there has been 'a surrender of this immunity in the plan of the convention.' " Ibid. (quoting The Federalist No. 81; accord, Blatchford, supra, at 781; Seminole Tribe, supra, at 68. This separate and distinct structural principle is not directly related to the scope of the judicial power established by Article III, but inheres in the system of federalism established by the Constitution. In exercising its Article I powers Con-
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