Cite as: 535 U. S. 743 (2002)
Opinion of the Court
early congressional practice, see id., at 743-744, we find a relatively barren historical record, from which the parties draw radically different conclusions. Petitioner FMC, for instance, argues that state sovereign immunity should not extend to administrative adjudications because "[t]here is no evidence that state immunity from the adjudication of complaints by executive officers was an established principle at the time of the adoption of the Constitution." Brief for Petitioner 28 (emphasis in original). The SCSPA, on the other hand, asserts that it is more relevant that "Congress did not attempt to subject the States to private suits before federal administrative tribunals" during the early days of our Republic. Brief for Respondent SCSPA 19.
In truth, the relevant history does not provide direct guidance for our inquiry. The Framers, who envisioned a limited Federal Government, could not have anticipated the vast growth of the administrative state. See Alden, supra, at 807 (Souter, J., dissenting) ("The proliferation of Government, State and Federal, would amaze the Framers, and the administrative state with its reams of regulations would leave them rubbing their eyes"). Because formalized administrative adjudications were all but unheard of in the late 18th century and early 19th century, the dearth of specific evidence indicating whether the Framers believed that the States' sovereign immunity would apply in such proceedings is unsurprising.
This Court, however, has applied a presumption—first explicitly stated in Hans v. Louisiana, supra—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." Id., at 18. We therefore attribute 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. For instance, while the United States asserts that "state entities have long been subject to similar administrative
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