Cite as: 527 U. S. 706 (1999)
Opinion of the Court
521 U. S., at 270 ("The real interests served by the Eleventh Amendment are not to be sacrificed to elementary mechanics of captions and pleading"). The rule, however, does not bar certain actions against state officers for injunctive or declaratory relief. Compare Ex parte Young, 209 U. S. 123 (1908), and In re Ayers, supra, with Coeur d'Alene Tribe of Idaho, supra, Seminole Tribe, supra, and Edelman v. Jordan, 415 U. S. 651 (1974). Even a suit for money damages may be prosecuted against a state officer in his individual capacity for unconstitutional or wrongful conduct fairly attributable to the officer himself, so long as the relief is sought not from the state treasury but from the officer personally. Scheuer v. Rhodes, 416 U. S. 232, 237-238 (1974); Ford Motor Co. v. Department of Treasury of Ind., 323 U. S. 459, 462 (1945).
The principle of sovereign immunity as reflected in our jurisprudence strikes the proper balance between the supremacy of federal law and the separate sovereignty of the States. See Pennhurst State School and Hospital v. Halderman, 465 U. S., at 105. Established rules provide ample means to correct ongoing violations of law and to vindicate the interests which animate the Supremacy Clause. See Green v. Mansour, 474 U. S., at 68. That we have, during the first 210 years of our constitutional history, found it unnecessary to decide the question presented here suggests a federal power to subject nonconsenting States to private suits in their own courts is unnecessary to uphold the Constitution and valid federal statutes as the supreme law.
IV
The sole remaining question is whether Maine has waived its immunity. The State of Maine "regards the immunity from suit as 'one of the highest attributes inherent in the nature of sovereignty,' " Cushing v. Cohen, 420 A. 2d 919, 923 (Me. 1981) (quoting Drake v. Smith, 390 A. 2d 541, 543 (Me. 1978)), and adheres to the general rule that "a specific authority conferred by an enactment of the legislature is req-
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