778
Breyer, J., dissenting
But the text of the Tenth Amendment says nothing about any such hidden reservation, one way or the other.
Indeed, the Court refers for textual support only to an earlier case, namely, Alden v. Maine, 527 U. S. 706 (1999) (holding that sovereign immunity prohibits a private citizen from suing a State in state court), and, through Alden, to the texts that Alden mentioned. These textual references include: (1) what Alexander Hamilton described as a constitutional "postulate," namely, that the States retain their immunity from "suits, without their consent," unless there has been a "surrender" of that immunity "in the plan of the convention," id., at 730 (internal quotation marks omitted); (2) what the Alden majority called "the system of federalism established by the Constitution," ibid.; and (3) what the Alden majority called "the constitutional design," id., at 731. See also id., at 760-762 (Souter, J., dissenting) (noting that the Court's opinion nowhere relied on constitutional text).
Considered purely as constitutional text, these words— "constitutional design," "system of federalism," and "plan of the convention"—suffer several defects. Their language is highly abstract, making them difficult to apply. They invite differing interpretations at least as much as do the Constitution's own broad liberty-protecting phrases, such as "due process of law" or the word "liberty" itself. And compared to these latter phrases, they suffer the additional disadvantage that they do not actually appear anywhere in the Constitution. Cf. generally Harmelin v. Michigan, 501 U. S. 957, 985-986 (1991). Regardless, unless supported by considerations of history, of constitutional purpose, or of related consequence, those abstract phrases cannot support today's result.
III
Conceding that its conception of sovereign immunity is ungrounded in the Constitution's text, see ante, at 751-753, 767-768, n. 18, the Court attempts to support its holding with history. But this effort is similarly destined to fail, because
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