778
Souter, J., dissenting
statement did not specifically address sovereign immunity, it expressed the major premise of what would later become Justice Wilson's position in Chisholm: that because the people, and not the States, are sovereign, sovereign immunity has no applicability to the States.
From a canvass of this spectrum of opinion expressed at the ratifying conventions, one thing is certain. No one was espousing an indefeasible, natural law view of sovereign immunity. The controversy over the enforceability of state debts subject to state law produced emphatic support for sovereign immunity from eminences as great as Madison and Marshall, but neither of them indicated adherence to any immunity conception outside the common law.
D
At the close of the ratification debates, the issue of the sovereign immunity of the States under Article III had not been definitively resolved, and in some instances the indeterminacy led the ratification conventions to respond in ways that point to the range of thinking about the doctrine. Several state ratifying conventions proposed amendments and issued declarations that would have exempted States from subjection to suit in federal court.18 The New York Conven-union, and that without it we could neither be free nor independent." Ibid.
18 "[T]he grand objection, that the states were made subject to the action of an individual, still remained for several years, notwithstanding the concurring dissent of several states at the time of accepting the constitution." 1 W. Blackstone, Commentaries, App. 352 (St. G. Tucker ed. 1803). In a footnote, Tucker specified that "[t]he several conventions of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, New York, Virginia, and North Carolina, proposed amendments in this respect." Ibid. The proposed amendments of the latter four States, which may be found in Elliot's Debates, are discussed immediately infra this page and 779-781. The extant published versions of the proposed amendments of Massachusetts and New Hampshire do not include such a proposed amendment. See, e. g., 1 Elliot's Debates 322-323 (nine proposed amendments of Massachusetts); 2 id., at 177-178 (same); H. R. Doc. No. 398, 69th Cong., 1st Sess., 1018-1020 (1927)
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