[{"command":"add_css","data":[{"rel":"stylesheet","media":"all","href":"\/sites\/default\/files\/css\/css_veuEhhb1658wti0_ZAig66JOyixENU-N9zhjLQSLfOQ.css?delta=0\u0026language=en\u0026theme=heritage_theme\u0026include=eJwrTi1LzdNPzkksLq7Uy8tPSQUAPMsGtA"}]},{"command":"invoke","selector":null,"method":"openEssay","args":["10000112","\n\n\u003Carticle about=\u0022\/constitution\/articles\/3\/essays\/113\/citizen-state-diversity\u0022 class=\u0022node node--type-constitution-essay node--promoted node--view-mode-embedded clearfix\u0022\u003E\n  \u003Ch1 class=\u0022title\u0022\u003E\u003Cspan\u003ECitizen-State Diversity\u003C\/span\u003E\n\u003C\/h1\u003E\n\n      \u003Cdiv class=\u0022con-location\u0022\u003E\n      Article III, Section 2, Clause 1\n    \u003C\/div\u003E\n    \u003Cdiv class=\u0022con-essay-context\u0022\u003E\n      \n            \u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe judicial Power shall extend to ...Controversies...between a State and Citizens of another State ...and between a State...and foreign States, Citizens or Subjects.\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003C\/div\u003E\n      \n    \u003C\/div\u003E\n      \n  \u003Cdiv class=\u0022con-essay-body\u0022\u003E\n    \n            \u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cp\u003EArticle III\u2019s provisions extending the federal judicial power \u201cto Controversies between a State and Citizens of another State\u201d and \u201cbetween a State\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009and foreign States, Citizens or Subjects\u201d are generally known as the Citizen-State Diversity Clauses. Although these clauses have a variety of applications, they have played a primary role in enduring controversies over the scope of state sovereign immunity in suits by private parties.\u003C\/p\u003E\n\n\u003Cp\u003EThe Founding generation seems generally to have accepted the notion that the states enjoyed some form of sovereign immunity, derived from the common law that shielded them against suits by private individuals. Article III\u2019s express provision for federal court jurisdiction over suits between individuals and state governments thus raised the possibility that ratification of the Constitution would override this common law immunity. Some Framers, such as Edmund Randolph and James Wilson, seemed to embrace this possibility as a means for ensuring that state governments would honor their debts; Randolph, for example, asked, \u201cAre we to say that we shall discard this government because it would make us all honest?\u201d Anti-Federalists, on the other hand, opposed Article III based on the same expectation. George Mason emphasized the threat of private lawsuits to a state\u2019s dignity, inquiring, \u201cIs this state to be brought to the bar of justice\u0026nbsp;like a delinquent individual?\u201d Others stressed the practical consequences of state suability, given the financially precarious position of the states following the Revolutionary War. In particular, many feared that suits by private parties to enforce the states\u2019 war debts in federal courts might bankrupt the nascent state governments. The Anti-Federalist writer Brutus, for example, warned that Article III would \u201cproduce the utmost confusion, and in its progress, will crush the states beneath its weight.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\n\n\u003Cp\u003EJames Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and other Federalists reacted to these concerns by insisting that Article III left the states\u2019 preexisting immunities intact. At the Virginia ratifying convention, Madison explained that the Citizen-State Diversity Clauses were designed to allow state governments to come into federal court as plaintiffs, not to allow private citizens to overcome a state\u2019s immunity as a defendant. John Marshall agreed: \u201cThe intent is, to enable states to recover claims of individuals residing in other states.\u201d And Hamilton acknowledged the states\u2019 fundamental immunity from such suits in \u003Cem\u003EThe Federalist \u003C\/em\u003ENo. 81, stating that \u201c[i]t is inherent in the nature of sovereignty not to be amenable to the suit of an individual \u003Cem\u003Ewithout its consent\u003C\/em\u003E.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009. [T]he exemption\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009is now enjoyed by the government of every State in the Union. Unless, therefore, there is a surrender of this immunity in the plan of the convention, it will remain with the States.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\n\n\u003Cp\u003EThe Supreme Court rejected Madison\u2019s and Hamilton\u2019s reading, however, in \u003Cem\u003EChisholm v. Georgia\u003C\/em\u003E (1793). That case involved a suit by a South Carolina citizen to recover Revolutionary War debts owed by the State of Georgia. The state insisted that it was immune from such suits, but the Court upheld its jurisdiction. While Justice James Wilson rejected the very notion of state sovereign immunity on the broad ground that it was antithetical to republican government, Justices John Jay, John Blair, and William Cushing relied primarily on the Citizen-State Diversity Clauses. They argued that those clauses had in fact done precisely what the Anti-Federalists feared\u2014that is, overridden the common law immunity that the states would otherwise have enjoyed in a suit by a private individual. Only Justice James Iredell dissented, primarily on the ground that Congress had not passed any statute that clearly authorized private suits against state governments in the federal courts.\u003C\/p\u003E\n\n\u003Cp\u003EThe Court would later say, in \u003Cem\u003EHans v. State of Louisiana\u003C\/em\u003E (1890), that \u003Cem\u003EChisholm\u003C\/em\u003E \u201ccreated such a shock of surprise throughout the country that, at the first meeting of Congress thereafter, the Eleventh Amendment to the Constitution was almost unanimously proposed, and was in due course adopted by the legislatures of the States.\u201d That amendment provided that \u201c[t]he Judicial power of the United States shall not be construed to extend to any suit in law or equity, commenced or prosecuted against one of the United States by Citizens of another State, or by Citizens or Subjects of any Foreign State.\u201d Several commentators have noted the extent to which the latter part of the amendment tracks the language of the Citizen-State Diversity Clauses; the \u201cdiversity theory\u201d of the amendment thus infers that it was intended simply to \u201crepeal\u201d the Citizen-State Diversity Clauses in all cases in which a nonconsenting state is the defendant. Others have advanced somewhat different interpretations of the amendment\u2019s text and intent; the important point for present purposes is simply that the proper reading of the Eleventh Amendment\u2014and the scope of state sovereign immunity generally\u2014remains bound up with disputes about what the Framers intended to accomplish with the Citizen-State Diversity Clauses.\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003C\/div\u003E\n      \n  \u003C\/div\u003E\n\n      \u003Cdiv class=\u0022con-essay-author\u0022\u003E\n      \u003Cdiv class=\u0022con-essay-author--media\u0022\u003E\n              \u003Cdiv class=\u0022con-essay-author--photo\u0022 style=\u0022background-image: url(\/sites\/default\/files\/Ernest_Young.jpg)\u0022\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\n            \u003C\/div\u003E\n      \u003Cdiv class=\u0022con-essay-author--info\u0022\u003E\n              \u003Ch4 class=\u0022con-essay-author--name\u0022\u003E\n                      \u003Ca href=\u0022http:\/\/www.law.duke.edu\/fac\/young\u0022\u003EErnest A. Young\u003C\/a\u003E\n                  \u003C\/h4\u003E\n                  \u003Cdiv class=\u0022con-essay-author--job\u0022\u003E\n         Alston \u0026amp; Bird Professor of Law, Duke University School of Law\n      \u003C\/div\u003E\n            \u003C\/div\u003E\n    \u003C\/div\u003E\n\n    \u003Cdiv class=\u0022con-essay-tabs\u0022\u003E\n      \u003Cul data-tabs class=\u0022tabs\u0022\u003E\n        \u003Cli class=\u0022button-more thirds\u0022\u003E\u003Ca data-tab href=\u0022#node-10000112-taba\u0022\u003EFurther Reading\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/li\u003E\n        \u003Cli class=\u0022button-more thirds\u0022\u003E\u003Ca data-tab href=\u0022#node-10000112-tabb\u0022\u003ECase Law\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/li\u003E\n        \u003Cli class=\u0022button-more thirds\u0022\u003E\u003Ca data-tab href=\u0022#node-10000112-tabc\u0022\u003ERelated Essays\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/li\u003E\n      \u003C\/ul\u003E\n\n      \u003Cdiv data-tabs-content\u003E\n        \u003Cdiv data-tabs-pane class=\u0022tabs-pane\u0022 id=\u0022node-10000112-taba\u0022\u003E\n          \n      \u003Cdiv\u003E\n              \u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cp\u003EWilliam Fletcher, \u003Ci\u003EA Historical Interpretation of the Eleventh Amendment: A Narrow Construction of an Affirmative Grant of Jurisdiction Rather than a Prohibition Against Jurisdiction\u003C\/i\u003E, 35 Stan. L. Rev. 1033 (1983)\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003C\/div\u003E\n              \u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cp\u003EClyde Jacobs, The Eleventh Amendment and Sovereign Immunity (1972)\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003C\/div\u003E\n              \u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cp\u003ECaleb Nelson, Sovereign Immunity as a Doctrine of Personal Jurisdiction, 115 HARV. L. REV. 1559 (2002)\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003C\/div\u003E\n              \u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cp\u003EAnn Woolhandler \u0026amp; Michael G. Collins, State Standing, 81 VA. L. REV. 387 (1995)\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003C\/div\u003E\n          \u003C\/div\u003E\n  \n        \u003C\/div\u003E\n        \u003Cdiv data-tabs-pane class=\u0022tabs-pane\u0022 id=\u0022node-10000112-tabb\u0022\u003E\n          \n      \u003Cdiv\u003E\n              \u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cp\u003EChisholm v. Georgia, 2 U.S. (2 Dall.) 419 (1793)\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003C\/div\u003E\n              \u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cp\u003ECohens v. Virginia, 19 U.S. (6 Wheat.) 264 (1821)\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003C\/div\u003E\n              \u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cp\u003EHans v. State of Louisiana, 134 U.S. 1 (1890)\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003C\/div\u003E\n              \u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cp\u003EAtascadero State Hospital v. Scanlon, 473 U.S. 234 (1985)\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003C\/div\u003E\n              \u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cp\u003ESeminole Tribe of Florida v. Florida, 517 U.S. 44 (1996)\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003C\/div\u003E\n              \u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cp\u003EAlden v. Maine, 527 U.S. 706 (1999)\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003C\/div\u003E\n          \u003C\/div\u003E\n  \n        \u003C\/div\u003E\n        \u003Cdiv data-tabs-pane class=\u0022tabs-pane\u0022 id=\u0022node-10000112-tabc\u0022\u003E\n                      \u003Ca href=\u0022\/essay_controller\/10000163\u0022 class=\u0022use-ajax\u0022\u003ESuits Against a State\u003C\/a\u003E\n                  \u003C\/div\u003E\n      \u003C\/div\u003E\n    \u003C\/div\u003E\n  \n\u003C\/article\u003E\n"]}]