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The Appropriations Power And Sovereign Immunity, Paul F. Figley, Jay Tidmarsh

Paul Figley

Discussions of sovereign immunity assume that the Constitution contains no explicit text regarding sovereign immunity. As a result, arguments about the existence—or nonexistence—of sovereign im- munity begin with the English and American common-law doctrines. Exploring political, fiscal, and legal developments in England and the American colonies in the seventeenth and eight- eenth centuries, this Article shows that focusing on common-law developments is misguided. The common-law approach to sovereign immunity ended in the early 1700s. The Bankers’ Case (1690– 1700), which is often regarded as the first modern common-law treatment of sovereign immunity, is in fact the last in the line …