770
Souter, J., dissenting
was immune from suit, the contemporary practice allowed private litigants to seek legal remedies against the Crown through the petition of right or the monstrans de droit in the Chancery or Exchequer. See 3 Blackstone *256-*257. A Virginia statute provided:
" 'Where the auditors according to their discretion and judgment shall disallow or abate any article of demand against the commonwealth, and any person shall think himself aggrieved thereby, he shall be at liberty to petition the high court of chancery or the general court, according to the nature of his case, for redress, and such court shall proceed to do right thereon; and a like petition shall be allowed in all other cases to any other person who is entitled to demand against the commonwealth any right in law or equity.' " 9 W. Hening, Statutes at Large: Being a Collection of the Laws of Virginia 536, 540 (1821), quoted in Pfander, Sovereign Immunity and the Right to Petition: Toward a First Amendment Right to Pursue Judicial Claims Against the Government, 91 Nw. U. L. Rev. 899, 939-940, and n. 142 (1997).
This "petition" was clearly reminiscent of the English petition of right, as was the language "shall proceed to do right thereon," which paralleled the formula of royal approval, "soit droit fait al partie," technically required before a petition of right could be adjudicated. See 3 Blackstone *256; Pfander, supra, at 940, and nn. 143-144. A New York statute similarly authorized petition to the court of chancery by anyone who thought himself aggrieved by the state auditor general's resolution of his account with the State. See An Act Directing a Mode for the Recovery of Debts Due to, and the Settlement of Accounts with, this State, March 30, 1781,
turns out to be the scanty evidence that the States understood sovereign immunity in the indefeasible, civilian, natural law sense, necessary to support the Court's position here.
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