Cite as: 527 U. S. 706 (1999)
Opinion of the Court
stitution and the law, the result is no less startling and unexpected than [Chisholm]"); id., at 18 ("The state courts have no power to entertain suits by individuals against a State without its consent. Then how does the Circuit Court, having only concurrent jurisdiction, acquire any such power?").
In particular, the exception to our sovereign immunity doctrine recognized in Ex parte Young, 209 U. S. 123 (1908), is based in part on the premise that sovereign immunity bars relief against States and their officers in both state and federal courts, and that certain suits for declaratory or injunctive relief against state officers must therefore be permitted if the Constitution is to remain the supreme law of the land. As we explained in General Oil Co. v. Crain, 209 U. S. 211 (1908), a case decided the same day as Ex parte Young and extending the rule of that case to state-court suits:
"It seems to be an obvious consequence that as a State can only perform its functions through its officers, a restraint upon them is a restraint upon its sovereignty from which it is exempt without its consent in the state tribunals, and exempt by the Eleventh Amendment of the Constitution of the United States, in the national tribunals. The error is in the universality of the conclusion, as we have seen. Necessarily to give adequate protection to constitutional rights a distinction must be made between valid and invalid state laws, as determining the character of the suit against state officers. And the suit at bar illustrates the necessity. If a suit against state officers is precluded in the national courts by the Eleventh Amendment to the Constitution, and may be forbidden by a State to its courts, as it is contended in the case at bar that it may be, without power of review by this court, it must be evident that an easy way is open to prevent the enforcement of many provisions of the Constitution . . . . See Ex parte Young, [209 U. S., at] 123, where this subject is fully discussed and the cases reviewed." 209 U. S., at 226-227.
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