Cite as: 527 U. S. 706 (1999)
Souter, J., dissenting
son was also pointed in commenting on federal jurisdiction over cases between a State and citizens of another State: "When this power is attended to, it will be found to be a necessary one. Impartiality is the leading feature in this Constitution; it pervades the whole. When a citizen has a controversy with another state, there ought to be a tribunal where both parties may stand on a just and equal footing." Id., at 491. Finally, Wilson laid out his view that sovereignty was in fact not located in the States at all: "Upon what principle is it contended that the sovereign power resides in the state governments? The honorable gentleman has said truly, that there can be no subordinate sovereignty. Now, if there cannot, my position is, that the sovereignty resides in the people; they have not parted with it; they have only dispensed such portions of the power as were conceived necessary for the public welfare." Id., at 443.17 While this
immunity in the natural law sense as indefeasibly "fundamental" to statehood.
Finally, the Court calls Wilson's view "a radical nationalist vision of the constitutional design," ibid., apparently in an attempt to discount it. But while Wilson's view of sovereignty was indeed radical in its deviation from older conceptions, this hardly distanced him from the American mainstream, and in October 1787, Washington himself called Wilson "as able, candid, & honest a member as any in Convention," 5 Papers of George Washington: Confederation Series 379 (W. Abbot & D. Twohig eds. 1997).
17 Nor was Wilson alone in this theory. At the South Carolina Convention, General Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, who had attended the Philadelphia Convention, took the position that the States never enjoyed individual and unfettered sovereignty, because the Declaration of Independence was an act of the Union, not of the particular States. See 4 Elliot's Debates 301. In his view, the Declaration "sufficiently confutes the . . . doctrine of the individual sovereignty and independence of the several states. . . . The separate independence and individual sovereignty of the several states were never thought of by the enlightened band of patriots who framed this Declaration; the several states are not even mentioned by name in any part of it,—as if it was intended to impress this maxim on America, that our freedom and independence arose from our
777
Page: Index Previous 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 NextLast modified: October 4, 2007