Law Commons^™

The Metes And Bounds Of State Sovereign Immunity, Scott Dodson

Faculty Publications

What are the constitutional parameters of state sovereign immunity? The Court has made clear that certain provisions of Article I contain no authority for overriding state sovereign immunity, while at least one other provision, the Fourteenth Amendment, permits Congress to abrogate the states’ sovereign immunity. How is this constitutional line drawn? It is temporally bound? In other words, are only certain Amendments enacted after the Eleventh Amendment free from absolute subservience to state sovereign immunity? Or, does it divide the original Constitution and its Amendments, meaning that state sovereign immunity permeates the original Constitution but does not infiltrate certain Amendments, …