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Full Opinion
NEVADA ET AL.
v.
HALL ET AL.
Supreme Court of United States.
*411 Michael W. Dyer, Deputy Attorney General of Nevada, argued the cause for petitioners. With him on the briefs were Robert Frank List, Attorney General, and James H. Thompson, Chief Deputy Attorney General.
Everett P. Rowe argued the cause and filed a brief for respondents.
MR. JUSTICE STEVENS delivered the opinion of the Court.
In this tort action arising out of an automobile collision in California, a California court has entered a judgment against the State of Nevada that Nevada's own courts could not have entered. We granted certiorari to decide whether federal law prohibits the California courts from entering such a judgment or, indeed, from asserting any jurisdiction over another sovereign State.
The respondents are California residents. They suffered severe injuries in an automoble collision on a California highway on May 13, 1968. The driver of the other vehicle, an employee of the University of Nevada, was killed in the collision. It is conceded that he was driving a car owned by the State, that he was engaged in official business, and that the University is an instrumentality of the State itself.
Respondents filed this suit for damages in the Superior Court for the city of San Francisco, naming the administrator *412 of the driver's estate, the University, and the State of Nevada as defendants. Process was served on the State and the University pursuant to the provisions of the California Vehicle Code authorizing service of process on nonresident motorists.[1] The trial court granted a motion to quash service on the State, but its order was reversed on appeal. The California Supreme Court held, as a matter of California law, that the State of Nevada was amenable to suit in California courts and remanded the case for trial. Hall v. University of Nevada, 8 Cal. 3d 522, 503 P. 2d 1363. We denied certiorari. 414 U. S. 820.
On remand, Nevada filed a pretrial motion to limit the amount of damages that might be recovered. A Nevada statute places a limit of $25,000 on any award in a tort action against the State pursuant to its statutory waiver of sovereign immunity.[2] Nevada argued that the Full Faith and Credit *413 Clause of the United States Constitution[3] required the California courts to enforce that statute. Nevada's motion was denied, and the case went to trial.
The jury concluded that the Nevada driver was negligent and awarded damages of $1,150,000.[4] The Superior Court entered judgment on the verdict and the Court of Appeal affirmed. After the California Supreme Court denied review, *414 the State of Nevada and its University successfully sought a writ of certiorari. 436 U. S. 925.
Despite its importance, the question whether a State may claim immunity from suit in the courts of another State has never been addressed by this Court. The question is not expressly answered by any provision of the Constitution; Nevada argues that it is implicitly answered by reference to the common understanding that no sovereign is amenable to suit without its consent—an understanding prevalent when the Constitution was framed and repeatedly reflected in this Court's opinions. In order to determine whether that understanding is embodied in the Constitution, as Nevada claims,[5] it is necessary to consider (1) the source and scope of the traditional doctrine of sovereign immunity; (2) the impact of the doctrine on the framing of the Constitution; (3) the Full Faith and Credit Clause; and (4) other aspects of the Constitution that qualify the sovereignty of the several States.
I
The doctrine of sovereign immunity is an amalgam of two quite different concepts, one applicable to suits in the sovereign's own courts and the other to suits in the courts of another sovereign.
The immunity of a truly independent sovereign from suit in its own courts has been enjoyed as a matter of absolute right for centuries. Only the sovereign's own consent could qualify the absolute character of that immunity.
The doctrine, as it developed at common law, had its origins in the feudal system. Describing those origins, Pollock and Maitland noted that no lord could be sued by a vassal in his *415 own court, but each petty lord was subject to suit in the courts of a higher lord. Since the King was at the apex of the feudal pyramid, there was no higher court in which he could be sued.[6] The King's immunity rested primarily on the structure of the feudal system and secondarily on a fiction that the King could do no wrong.[7]
We must, of course, reject the fiction. It was rejected by the colonists when they declared their independence from the Crown,[8] and the record in this case discloses an actual wrong committed by Nevada. But the notion that immunity from suit is an attribute of sovereignty is reflected in our cases.
Mr. Chief Justice Jay described sovereignty as the "right to govern";[9] that kind of right would necessarily encompass the right to determine what suits may be brought in the sovereign's own courts. Thus, Mr. Justice Holmes explained sovereign *416 immunity as based "on the logical and practical ground that there can be no legal right as against the authority that makes the law on which the right depends."[10]
This explanation adequately supports the conclusion that no sovereign may be sued in its own courts without its consent, but it affords no support for a claim of immunity in another sovereign's courts. Such a claim necessarily implicates the power and authority of a second sovereign; its source must be found either in an agreement, express or implied, between the two sovereigns, or in the voluntary decision of the second to respect the dignity of the first as a matter of comity.
This point was plainly stated by Mr. Chief Justice Marshall in The Schooner Exchange v. McFaddon, 7 Cranch 116, which held that an American court could not assert jurisdiction over a vessel in which Napoleon, the reigning Emperor of France, claimed a sovereign right. In that case, the Chief Justice observed:
"The jurisdiction of courts is a branch of that which is possessed by the nation as an independent sovereign power.
"The jurisdiction of the nation within its own territory is necessarily exclusive and absolute. It is susceptible of no limitation not imposed by itself. Any restriction upon it, deriving validity from an external source, would imply a diminution of its sovereignty to the extent of the restriction, and an investment of that sovereignty to the same extent in that power which could impose such restriction.
"All exceptions, therefore, to the full and complete power of a nation within its own territories, must be traced up to the consent of the nation itself. They can flow from no other legitimate source." Id., at 136.
*417 After noting that the source of any immunity for the French vessel must be found in American law, the Chief Justice interpreted that law as recognizing the common usage among nations in which every sovereign was understood to have waived its exclusive territorial jurisdiction over visiting sovereigns, or their representatives, in certain classes of cases.[11]
The opinion in The Schooner Exchange makes clear that if California and Nevada were independent and completely sovereign nations, Nevada's claim of immunity from suit in California's courts would be answered by reference to the law of California.[12] It is fair to infer that if the immunity defense Nevada asserts today had been raised in 1812 when The Schooner Exchange was decided, or earlier when the Constitution was being framed, the defense would have been sustained by the California courts.[13] By rejecting the defense in *418 this very case, however, the California courts have told us that whatever California law may have been in the past, it no longer extends immunity to Nevada as a matter of comity.
Nevada quite rightly does not ask us to review the California courts' interpretation of California law. Rather, it argues that California is not free, as a sovereign, to apply its own law, but is bound instead by a federal rule of law implicit in the Constitution that requires all of the States to adhere to the sovereign-immunity doctrine as it prevailed when the Constitution was adopted. Unless such a federal rule exists, we of course have no power to disturb the judgment of the California courts.
II
Unquestionably the doctrine of sovereign immunity was a matter of importance in the early days of independence.[14] Many of the States were heavily indebted as a result of the Revolutionary War. They were vitally interested in the question whether the creation of a new federal sovereign, with courts of its own, would automatically subject them, like lower English lords, to suits in the courts of the "higher" sovereign.
But the question whether one State might be subject to suit in the courts of another State was apparently not a matter of concern when the new Constitution was being drafted *419 and ratified. Regardless of whether the Framers were correct in assuming, as presumably they did, that prevailing notions of comity would provide adequate protection against the unlikely prospect of an attempt by the courts of one State to assert jurisdiction over another, the need for constitutional protection against that contingency was not discussed.
The debate about the suability of the States focused on the scope of the judicial power of the United States authorized by Art. III.[15] In The Federalist, Hamilton took the position that this authorization did not extend to suits brought by an individual against a nonconsenting State.[16] The contrary position was also advocated[17] and actually prevailed in this Court's decision in Chisholm v. Georgia, 2 Dall. 419.
*420 The Chisholm decision led to the prompt adoption of the Eleventh Amendment.[18] That Amendment places explicit limits on the powers of federal courts to entertain suits against a State.[19]
The language used by the Court in cases construing these limits, like the language used during the debates on ratification of the Constitution, emphasized the widespread acceptance of the view that a sovereign State is never amenable to suit without its consent.[20] But all of these cases, and all of the relevant debate, concerned questions of federal-court jurisdiction and the extent to which the States, by ratifying the Constitution and creating federal courts, had authorized suits *421 against themselves in those courts. These decisions do not answer the question whether the Constitution places any limit on the exercise of one's State's power to authorize its courts to assert jurisdiction over another State. Nor does anything in Art. III authorizing the judicial power of the United States, or in the Eleventh Amendment limitation on that power, provide any basis, explicit or implicit, for this Court to impose limits on the powers of California exercised in this case. A mandate for federal-court enforcement of interstate comity must find its basis elsewhere in the Constitution.
III
Nevada claims that the Full Faith and Credit Clause of the Constitution requires California to respect the limitations on Nevada's statutory waiver of its immunity from suit. That waiver only gives Nevada's consent to suits in its own courts. Moreover, even if the waiver is treated as a consent to be sued in California, California must honor the condition attached to that consent and limit respondents' recovery to $25,000, the maximum allowable in an action in Nevada's courts.
The Full Faith and Credit Clause does require each State to give effect to official acts of other States. A judgment entered in one State must be respected in another provided that the first State had jurisdiction over the parties and the subject matter. Moreover, in certain limited situations, the courts of one State must apply the statutory law of another State. Thus, in Bradford Electric Co. v. Clapper, 286 U. S. 145, the Court held that a federal court sitting in New Hampshire was required by the Constitution to apply Vermont law in an action between a Vermont employee and a Vermont employer arising out of a contract made in Vermont.[21] But this Court's *422 decision in Pacific Insurance Co. v. Industrial Accident Comm'n, 306 U. S. 493, clearly establishes that the Full Faith and Credit Clause does not require a State to apply another State's law in violation of its own legitimate public policy.[22]
The question in Pacific Insurance was whether the Full Faith and Credit Clause precluded California from applying its own workmen's compensation Act in the case of an injury suffered by a Massachusetts employee of a Massachusetts employer while in California in the course of his employment. Even though the employer and employee had agreed to be bound by Massachusetts law, this Court held that California was not precluded from applying its own law imposing greater responsibilities on the employer. In doing so, the Court reasoned:
"It has often been recognized by this Court that there are some limitations upon the extent to which a state may be required by the full faith and credit clause to enforce even the judgment of another state in contravention of its own statutes or policy. . . . And in the case of statutes, the extrastate effect of which Congress has not prescribed, as it may under the constitutional provision, we think the conclusion is unavoidable that the full faith and credit clause does not require one state to substitute for its own statute, applicable to persons and events within it, the conflicting statute of another state, even though that statute is of controlling force in the courts of *423 the state of its enactment with respect to the same persons and events. . . . Although Massachusetts has an interest in safeguarding the compensation of Massachusetts employees while temporarily abroad in the course of their employment, and may adopt that policy for itself, that could hardly be thought to support an application of the full faith and credit clause which would override the constitutional authority of another state to legislate for the bodily safety and economic protection of employees injured within it. Few matters could be deemed more appropriately the concern of the state in which the injury occurs or more completely within its power." Id., at 502-503.
The Clapper case was distinguished on the ground that "there was nothing in the New Hampshire statute, the decisions of its courts, or in the circumstances of the case, to suggest that reliance on the provisions of the Vermont statute, as a defense to the New Hampshire suit, was obnoxious to the policy of New Hampshire." 306 U. S., at 504.[23] In Pacific Insurance, on the other hand, California had its own scheme governing compensation for injuries in the State, and the California courts had found that the policy of that scheme would be frustrated were it denied enforcement. "Full faith and credit," this Court concluded, "does not here enable one state to legislate for the other or to project its laws across *424 state lines so as to preclude the other from prescribing for itself the legal consequences of acts within it." Id., at 504-505.
A similar conclusion is appropriate in this case. The interest of California afforded such respect in the Pacific Insurance case was in providing for "the bodily safety and economic protection of employees injured within it." Id., at 503. In this case, California's interest is the closely related and equally substantial one of providing "full protection to those who are injured on its highways through the negligence of both residents and nonresidents." App. to Pet. for Cert. vii. To effectuate this interest, California has provided by statute for jurisdiction in its courts over residents and nonresidents alike to allow those injured on its highways through the negligence of others to secure full compensation for their injuries in the California courts.
In further implementation of that policy, California has unequivocally waived its own immunity from liability for the torts committed by its own agents and authorized full recovery even against the sovereign. As the California courts have found, to require California either to surrender jurisdiction or to limit respondents' recovery to the $25,000 maximum of the Nevada statute would be obnoxious to its statutorily based policies of jurisdiction over nonresident motorists and full recovery. The Full Faith and Credit Clause does not require this result.[24]
IV
Even apart from the Full Faith and Credit Clause, Nevada argues that the Constitution implicitly establishes a Union in which the States are not free to treat each other as unfriendly *425 sovereigns, but must respect the sovereignty of one another. While sovereign nations are free to levy discriminatory taxes on the goods of other nations or to bar their entry altogether, the States of the Union are not.[25] Nor are the States free to deny extradition of a fugitive when a proper demand is made by the executive of another State.[26] And the citizens in each State are entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States.[27]
Each of these provisions places a specific limitation on the sovereignty of the several States. Collectively they demonstrate that ours is not a union of 50 wholly independent sovereigns. But these provisions do not imply that any one State's immunity from suit in the courts of another State is anything other than a matter of comity. Indeed, in view of the Tenth Amendment's reminder that powers not delegated to the Federal Government nor prohibited to the States are reserved to the States or to the people,[28] the existence of express limitations on state sovereignty may equally imply that caution should be exercised before concluding that unstated limitations on state power were intended by the Framers.
In the past, this Court has presumed that the States intended to adopt policies of broad comity toward one another. But this presumption reflected an understanding of state policy, rather than a constitutional command. As this Court stated in Bank of Augusta v. Earle, 13 Pet. 519, 590:
"The intimate union of these states, as members of the same great political family; the deep and vital interests *426 which bind them so closely together; should lead us, in the absence of proof to the contrary, to presume a greater degree of comity, and friendship, and kindness towards one another, than we should be authorized to presume between foreign nations. And when (as without doubt must occasionally happen) the interest or policy of any state requires it to restrict the rule, it has but to declare its will, and the legal presumption is at once at an end."
In this case, California has "declared its will"; it has adopted as its policy full compensation in its courts for injuries on its highways resulting from the negligence of others, whether those others be residents or nonresidents, agents of the State, or private citizens. Nothing in the Federal Constitution authorizes or obligates this Court to frustrate that policy out of enforced respect for the sovereignty of Nevada.[29]
In this Nation each sovereign governs only with the consent of the governed. The people of Nevada have consented to a system in which their State is subject only to limited liability in tort. But the people of California, who have had no voice in Nevada's decision, have adopted a different system. Each of these decisions is equally entitled to our respect.
It may be wise policy, as a matter of harmonious interstate relations, for States to accord each other immunity or to respect any established limits on liability. They are free to do so. But if a federal court were to hold, by inference from the structure of our Constitution and nothing else, that California is not free in this case to enforce its policy of full compensation, that holding would constitute the real intrusion *427 on the sovereignty of the States—and the power of the people—in our Union.
The judgment of the California Court of Appeal is
Affirmed.
MR. JUSTICE BLACKMUN, with whom THE CHIEF JUSTICE and MR. JUSTICE REHNQUIST join, dissenting.
The Court, in a plausible opinion, holds that the State of Nevada is subject to an unconsented suit in a California state court for damages in tort. This result at first glance does not seem too unreasonable. One might well ask why Nevada, even though it is a State, and even though it has not given its consent, should not be responsible for the wrong its servant perpetrated on a California highway. And one might also inquire how it is that, if no provision of our national Constitution specifically prevents the nonimmunity result, these tort action plaintiffs could be denied their judgment.
But the Court paints with a very broad brush, and I am troubled by the implications of its holding. Despite a fragile footnote disclaimer, ante, at 424 n. 24, the Court's basic and undeniable ruling is that what we have always thought of as a "sovereign State" is now to be treated in the courts of a sister State, once jurisdiction is obtained, just as any other litigant. I fear the ultimate consequences of that holding, and I suspect that the Court has opened the door to avenues of liability and interstate retaliation that will prove unsettling and upsetting for our federal system. Accordingly, I dissent.
It is important to note that at the time of the Constitutional Convention, as the Court concedes, there was "wide-spread acceptance of the view that a sovereign State is never amenable to suit without its consent." Ante, at 420. The Court also acknowledges that "the notion that immunity from suit is an attribute of sovereignty is reflected in our cases." Ante, at 415. Despite these concessions, the Court holds that the sovereign-immunity doctrine is a mere matter of "comity" *428 which a State is free to reject whenever its "policy" so dictates. Ante, at 426.
There is no limit to the breadth of the Court's rationale, which goes beyond the approach taken by the California Court of Appeal in this case. That court theorized that Nevada was not "sovereign" for purposes of this case because sovereignty ended at the California-Nevada line: " `When the sister state enters into activities in this state, it is not exercising sovereign power over the citizens of this state and is not entitled to the benefits of the sovereign immunity doctrine as to those activities unless this state has conferred immunity by law or as a matter of comity.' " Hall v. University of Nevada, 74 Cal. App. 3d 280, 284, 141 Cal. Rptr. 439, 441 (1977), quoting Hall v. University of Nevada, 8 Cal. 3d 522, 524, 503 P. 2d 1363, 1364 (1972), cert. denied, 414 U. S. 820 (1973). The California court, in other words, recognized that sovereign States are immune from unconsented suit; it held only that this rule failed in its application on the facts because Nevada was not a "sovereign" when its agent entered California and committed a tort there. Indeed, the court said flatly that " `state sovereignty ends at the state boundary,' " 74 Cal. App. 3d, at 284, 141 Cal. Rptr., at 441, again quoting Hall, 8 Cal. 3d, at 525, 503 P. 2d, at 1365.
That reasoning finds no place in this Court's opinion. Rather, the Court assumes that Nevada is "sovereign," but then concludes that the sovereign-immunity doctrine has no constitutional source. Thus, it says, California can abolish the doctrine at will. By this reasoning, Nevada's amenability to suit in California is not conditioned on its agent's having committed a tortious act in California. Since the Court finds no constitutional source for the sovereign-immunity doctrine, California, so far as the Federal Constitution is concerned, is able and free to treat Nevada, and any other State, just as it would treat any other litigant. The Court's theory means that State A constitutionally can be sued by an individual in *429 the courts of State B on any cause of action, provided only that the plaintiff in State B obtains jurisdiction over State A consistently with the Due Process Clause.
The Court, by its footnote 24, ante, at 424, purports to confine its holding to traffic-accident torts committed outside the defendant State, and perhaps even to traffic "policies." Such facts, however, play absolutely no part in the reasoning by which the Court reaches its conclusion. The Court says merely that "California has `declared its will'; it has adopted as its policy full compensation in its courts for injuries on its highways . . . . Nothing in the Federal Constitution authorizes or obligates this Court to frustrate that policy." Ante, at 426. There is no suggestion in this language that, if California had adopted some other policy in some other area of the law, the result would be any different. If, indeed, there is "[n]othing in the Federal Constitution" that allows frustration of California's policy, it is hard to see just how the Court could use a different analysis or reach a different result in a different case.
The Court's expansive logic and broad holding—that so far as the Constitution is concerned, State A can be sued in State B on the same terms any other litigant can be sued— will place severe strains on our system of cooperative federalism. States in all likelihood will retaliate against one another for respectively abolishing the "sovereign immunity" doctrine. States' legal officers will be required to defend suits in all other States. States probably will decide to modify their tax-collection and revenue systems in order to avoid the collection of judgments. In this very case, for example, Nevada evidently maintains cash balances in California banks to facilitate the collection of sales taxes from California corporations doing business in Nevada. Pet. for Cert. 5. Under the Court's decision, Nevada will have strong incentive to withdraw those balances and place them in Nevada banks so as to insulate itself from California judgments. If respondents *430 were forced to seek satisfaction of their judgment in Nevada, that State, of course, might endeavor to refuse to enforce that judgment, or enforce it only on Nevada's terms. The Court's decision, thus, may force radical changes in the way States do business with one another, and it imposes, as well, financial and administrative burdens on the States themselves.
I must agree with the Court that if the judgment of the California Court of Appeal is to be reversed, a constitutional source for Nevada's sovereign immunity must be found. I would find that source not in an express provision of the Constitution but in a guarantee that is implied as an essential component of federalism. The Court has had no difficulty in implying the guarantee of freedom of association in the First Amendment, NAACP v. Button, 371 U. S. 415, 430-431 (1963); Kusper v. Pontikes, 414 U. S. 51, 56-57 (1973), and it has had no difficulty in implying a right of interstate travel, Shapiro v. Thompson, 394 U. S. 618 (1969); United States v. Guest, 383 U. S. 745 (1966). In the latter case, the Court observed, id., at 757: "The constitutional right to travel from one State to another . . . occupies a position fundamental to the concept of our Federal Union." And although the right of interstate travel "finds no explicit mention in the Constitution," the reason, "it has been suggested, is that a right so elementary was conceived from the beginning to be a necessary concomitant of the stronger Union the Constitution created." Id., at 758. Accordingly, the Court acknowledged the existence of this constitutional right without finding it necessary "to ascribe the source of this right . . . to a particular constitutional provision." Shapiro v. Thompson, 394 U. S., at 630.
I have no difficulty in accepting the same argument for the existence of a constitutional doctrine of interstate sovereign immunity. The Court's acknowledgment, referred to above, that the Framers must have assumed that States were immune *431 from suit in the courts of their sister States lends substantial support. The only reason why this immunity did not receive specific mention is that it was too obvious to deserve mention. The prompt passage of the Eleventh Amendment nullifying the decision in Chisholm v. Georgia, 2 Dall. 419 (1793), is surely significant. If the Framers were indeed concerned lest the States be haled before the federal courts—as the courts of a " `higher' sovereign," ante, at 418—how much more must they have reprehended the notion of a State's being haled before the courts of a sister State. The concept of sovereign immunity prevailed at the time of the Constitutional Convention. It is, for me, sufficiently fundamental to our federal structure to have implicit constitutional dimension. Indeed, if the Court means what it implies in its footnote 24—that some state policies might require a different result—it must be suggesting that there are some federalism constraints on a State's amenability to suit in the courts of another State. If that is so, the only question is whether the facts of this case are sufficient to call the implicit constitutional right of sovereign immunity into play here. I would answer that question in the affirmative.
Finally, it strikes me as somewhat curious that the Court relegates to a passing footnote reference what apparently is the only other appellate litigation in which the precise question presented here was considered and, indeed, in which the Court's result was rejected. Paulus v. South Dakota, 52 N. D. 84, 201 N. W. 867 (1924); Paulus v. South Dakota, 58 N. D. 643, 227 N. W. 52 (1929). The plaintiff there was injured in a coal mine operated in North Dakota by the State of South Dakota. He sued South Dakota in a North Dakota state court. The Supreme Court of North Dakota rejected the plaintiff's contention that South Dakota "discards its sovereignty when it crosses the boundary line." 52 N. D., at 92, 201 N. W., at 870. It held that South Dakota was immune from suit in the North Dakota courts; *432 "Therefore, in the absence of allegations as to the law of the sister state showing a consent to be sued, the courts of this state must necessarily regard a sovereign sister state as immune to the same extent that this state would be immune in the absence of a consenting statute." 58 N. D., at 647, 227 N. W., at 54. The court noted that under the Eleventh Amendment no State could be sued in federal court by a citizen of another State. "Much less," the court reasoned, "would it be consistent with any sound conception of sovereignty that a state might be haled into the courts of a sister sovereign state at the will or behest of citizens or residents of the latter." Id., at 649, 227 N. W., at 55. The Supreme Court of California purported to distinguish Paulus (citing only the first opinion in that litigation) on the ground that "the plaintiff was a citizen of South Dakota." Hall v. University of Nevada, 8 Cal. 3d, at 525, 503 P. 2d, at 1365. That court, however, made no reference to the Supreme Court of North Dakota's second opinion and thus passed over the fact that the plaintiff had amended his complaint to allege that he was a resident of North Dakota. The North Dakota Supreme Court then held that that fact "in nowise alter[ed]" its view of the immunity issue. 58 N. D., at 648, 227 N. W., at 54. Thus, the only authority that has been cited to us or that we have found is directly opposed to the Court's conclusion.
I would reverse the judgment of the California Court of Appeal, and remit the plaintiffs-respondents to those remedies prescribed by the statutes of Nevada.
MR. JUSTICE REHNQUIST, with whom THE CHIEF JUSTICE joins, dissenting
Like my Brother BLACKMUN, I cannot agree with the majority that there is no constitutional source for the sovereign immunity asserted in this case by the State of Nevada. I think the Court's decision today works a fundamental readjustment of interstate relationships which is impossible to *433 reconcile not only with an "assumption" this and other courts have entertained for almost 200 years, but also with express holdings of this Court and the logic of the constitutional plan itself.
Any document—particularly a constitution—is built on certain postulates or assumptions; it draws on shared experience and common understanding. On a certain level, that observation is obvious. Concepts such as "State" and "Bill of Attainder" are not defined in the Constitution and demand external referents. But on a more subtle plane, when the Constitution is ambiguous or silent on a particular issue, this Court has often relied on notions of a constitutional plan—the implicit ordering of relationships within the federal system necessary to make the Constitution a workable governing charter and to give each provision within that document the full effect intended by the Framers. The tacit postulates yielded by that ordering are as much engrained in the fabric of the document as its express provisions, because without them the Constitution is denied force and often meaning.[1] Thus, in McCulloch v. Maryland, 4 Wheat. 316 (1819), Mr. Chief Justice Marshall, writing for the Court, invalidated a state tax on a federal instrumentality even though no express provision for intergovernmental tax immunity can be found in *434 the Constitution. He relied on the notion that the power to tax is the power to destroy, and that to concede the States such a power would place at their mercy the Constitution's affirmative grants of authority to the Federal Government— a result the Framers could not have intended. More recently this Court invalidated a federal minimum wage for state employees on the ground that it threatened the States' " `ability to function effectively in a federal system.' " National League of Cities v. Usery, 426 U. S. 833, 852 (1976), quoting Fry v. United States, 421 U. S. 542, 547 n. 7 (1975). The Court's literalism, therefore, cannot be dispositive here, and we must examine further the understanding of the Framers and the consequent doctrinal evolution of concepts of state sovereignty.
Article III, like virtually every other Article of the Constitution, was inspired by the experience under the Articles of Confederation. To speak of the "judicial Power" of the United States under the Articles of Confederation is to invite charges of pretense, for there was very little latitude for federal resolution of disputes. The Confederation Congress could create prize courts and courts for the adjudication of "high seas" crimes. It could set up ad hoc and essentially powerless tribunals to consider controversies between States and between individuals who claimed lands under the grants of different States.[2] But with respect to all other disputes of interstate or international significance, the litigants were left to the state courts and to the provincialism that proved the bane of this country's earliest attempt at political organization.
One obvious attribute of Art. III in light of the Confederation experience was the potential for a system of neutral forums for the settlement of disputes between States and citizens of different States. The theme recurs throughout the *435 ratification debates. For example, during the debates in North Carolina, William Davie, a member of the Constitutional Convention, observed:
"It has been equally ceded, by the strongest opposers to this government, that the federal courts should have cognizance of controversies between two or more states, between a state and the citizens of another state, and between the citizens of the same state claiming lands under the grant of different states. Its jurisdiction in these cases is necessary to secure impartiality in decisions, and preserve tranquility among the states. It is impossible that there should be impartiality when a party affected is to be judge.
"The security of impartiality is the principal reason for giving up the ultimate decision of controversies between citizens of different states." 4 J. Elliot, Debates on the Federal Constitution 159 (1876) (hereinafter Elliot's Debates).
As the Court observes, the matter of sovereign immunity was indeed a subject of great importance in the early days of the Republic. In fact, it received considerable attention in the years immediately preceding the Constitutional Convention. In 1781 a citizen of Pennsylvania brought suit in the Pennsylvania courts in an effort to attach property belonging to Virginia that was located in Philadelphia Harbor. The case raised such concerns throughout the States that the Virginia delegation to the Confederation Congress sought the suppression of the attachment order. The Pennsylvania Court of Common Pleas ultimately held that by virtue of its sovereign immunity, Virginia was immune from the processes of Pennsylvania. Nathan v. Virginia, 1 Dall. 77 (1781).
That experience undoubtedly left an impression—particularly on Virginians—and throughout the debates on the Constitution fears were expressed that extending the judicial power of the United States to controversies "between a state *436 and citizens of another state" would abrogate the States' sovereign immunity. James Madison and John Marshall repeatedly assured opponents of the Constitution, such as Patrick Henry, that the sovereign immunity of the States was secure.[3] Alexander Hamilton as Publius wrote:
"It is inherent in the nature of sovereignty not to be amenable to the suit of an individual without its consent. This is the general sense, and the general practice of mankind; and the exemption, as one of the attributes of sovereignty, is 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