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