622
Opinion of the Court
Ann. (Supp. 1996). Georgia adds that in Ford, this Court unanimously interpreted roughly similar state laws similarly, that the Court held that "no properly authorized executive or administrative officer of the state has waived the state's immunity," 328 U. S., at 469, and that it sustained an Eleventh Amendment defense raised for the first time after a State had litigated a claim brought against it in federal court. That is to say, in Ford a State regained immunity by showing the attorney general's lack of statutory authority to waive— even after the State litigated a case brought against it in federal court. Why, then, asks Georgia, can it not regain immunity in the same way, even after it removed its case to federal court?
The short answer to this question is that this case involves a State that voluntarily invoked the jurisdiction of the federal court, while Ford involved a State that a private plaintiff had involuntarily made a defendant in federal court. This Court consistently has found a waiver when a State's attorney general, authorized (as here) to bring a case in federal court, has voluntarily invoked that court's jurisdiction. See Gardner, 329 U. S., at 574-575; Gunter, 200 U. S., at 285-289, 292; cf. Clark, 108 U. S., at 447-448 (not inquiring into attorney general's authority). And the Eleventh Amendment waiver rules are different when a State's federal-court participation is involuntary. See Hans v. Louisiana, 134 U. S. 1 (1890); cf. U. S. Const., Amdt. 11 (discussing suits "commenced or prosecuted against" a State).
But there is a more important answer. In large part the rule governing voluntary invocations of federal jurisdiction has rested upon the problems of inconsistency and unfairness that a contrary rule of law would create. Gunter, supra, at 284. And that determination reflects a belief that neither those who wrote the Eleventh Amendment nor the States themselves (insofar as they authorize litigation in federal courts) would intend to create that unfairness. As in analogous contexts, in which such matters are questions of federal
Page: Index Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 NextLast modified: October 4, 2007