744
Syllabus
(b) Formalized administrative adjudications were all but unheard of in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, so it is unsurprising that there is no specific evidence indicating whether the Framers believed that sovereign immunity would apply to such proceedings. However, because of the presumption that the Constitution was not intended to "rais[e] up" any proceedings against the States that were "anomalous and unheard of when the Constitution was adopted," Hans v. Louisiana, 134 U. S. 1, 18, this Court attributes great significance to the fact that States were not subject to private suits in administrative adjudications at the time of the founding or for many years thereafter. Pp. 754-756.
(c) To decide whether the Hans presumption applies here, this Court must determine whether FMC adjudications are the type of proceedings from which the Framers would have thought the States possessed immunity when they agreed to enter the Union. This Court previously has noted that ALJs and trial judges play similar roles in adjudicative proceedings and that administrative adjudications and judicial proceedings generally share numerous common features. Butz v. Economou, 438 U. S. 478, 513, 514. Turning to FMC adjudications specifically, neither the FMC nor the United States disputes the Fourth Circuit's characterization that such a proceeding walks, talks, and squawks like a lawsuit or denies that the similarities identified in Butz between administrative adjudications and trial court proceedings are present here. FMC administrative proceedings bear a remarkably strong resemblance to federal civil litigation. The rules governing pleadings in both types of proceedings are quite similar; discovery in FMC adjudications largely mirrors that in federal civil litigation; the role of the ALJ is similar to that of an Article III judge; and, in situations not covered by an FMC rule, the FMC's own Rules of Practice and Procedure provide that Federal Rules of Civil Procedure are to be used if consistent with sound administrative practice. Pp. 756-759.
(d) State sovereign immunity's preeminent purpose—to accord States the dignity that is consistent with their status as sovereign entities— and the overwhelming similarities between FMC adjudicative proceedings and civil litigation lead to the conclusion that the FMC is barred from adjudicating a private party's complaint against a nonconsenting State. If the Framers thought it an impermissible affront to a State's dignity to be required to answer private parties' complaints in federal court, they would not have found it acceptable to compel a State to do the same thing before a federal administrative tribunal. And it would be quite strange were Congress prohibited from exercising its Article I powers to abrogate state sovereign immunity in Article III judicial proceedings, but permitted to use those same powers to create court-
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