Cite as: 527 U. S. 706 (1999)
Souter, J., dissenting
doctrine of sovereign immunity entirely anomalous in the American Republic. Although he did not speak specifically of a State's immunity in its own courts, his view necessarily requires that such immunity would not have been justifiable as a tenet of absolutist natural law.
Chief Justice Jay took a less vehement tone in his opinion, but he, too, denied the applicability of the doctrine of sovereign immunity to the States. He explained the doctrine as an incident of European feudalism, id., at 471, and said that by contrast,
"[n]o such ideas obtain here; at the Revolution, the sovereignty devolved on the people; and they are truly the sovereigns of the country, but they are sovereigns without subjects (unless the African slaves among us may be so called) and have none to govern but themselves; the citizens of America are equal as fellow citizens, and as joint tenants in the sovereignty." Id., at 471-472.
From the difference between the sovereignty of princes and that of the people, Chief Justice Jay argued, it followed that a State might be sued. When a State sued another State, as all agreed it could do in federal court, all the people of one State sued all the people of the other. "But why it should be more incompatible, that all the people of a State should be sued by one citizen, than by one hundred thousand, I cannot perceive, the process in both cases being alike; and the consequences of a judgment alike." Id., at 473. Finally, Chief Justice Jay pointed out, Article III authorized suits between a State and citizens of another State. Although the Chief Justice reserved judgment on whether the United States might be sued by a citizen, given that the courts must rely on the Executive to implement their decisions, he made it clear that this reservation was practical, and not theoretical: "I wish the State of society was so far improved, and the science of Government advanced to such a degree of perfection, as that the whole nation could in the peaceable course
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