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'Amendment XI' (the 'Eleventh Amendment') of the United States Constitution was passed by the U.S. Congress on March 4, 1794, and was ratified on February 7, 1795.

Contents

Text

Summary

Proposal and ratification

References

External links

Text

Summary

The amendment was passed after the ruling of the United States Supreme Court in ''Chisholm v. Georgia'', , that federal courts had the authority to hear cases in law and equity against states by private citizens, and that states did not enjoy sovereign immunity from suits made by citizens of other states. Thus, the amendment clarified of the original Constitution, which gave diversity jurisdiction to the judiciary to hear cases "between a state and citizens of another state."
Although the amendment's text does not by its own terms include suits brought by a citizen against his ''own'' state, the Supreme Court has consistently held (e.g., in ''Hans v. Louisiana,'' ) that a broader principle of state sovereign immunity exists. As the Court stated in ''Alden v. Maine'' (1999):
The dissenting view, which has never garnered more than four justices' support, is that the states surrendered their sovereign immunity when they ratified the Constitution (and certainly when they ratified the Fourteenth Amendment), and that the Eleventh Amendment should therefore be read narrowly as a constitutional limitation on the diversity jurisdiction of the federal courts.
The Eleventh Amendment confers on non-consenting states immunity from suit for money damages or other equitable relief. Nonetheless, federal courts may enjoin state officials from violating federal law under ''Ex parte Young'' (1908). Furthermore, the Supreme Court has held that Congress, under the enforcement provision of the Fourteenth Amendment, may abrogate state immunity from suit. See, e.g., ''Fitzpatrick v. Bitzer'', . Also, in ''Central Virginia Community College v. Katz'' (2006), the Court narrowed the scope of its previous sovereign immunity rulings, and held that the Bankruptcy Clause of Article I abrogated state sovereign immunity.

Proposal and ratification

Congress proposed the Eleventh Amendment on March 4, 1794.^[1] The following states ratified the amendment:
# New York (March 27, 1794)
# Rhode Island (March 31, 1794)
# Connecticut (May 8, 1794)
# New Hampshire (June 16, 1794)
# Massachusetts (June 26, 1794)
# Vermont (November 9, 1794)
# Virginia (November 18, 1794)
# Georgia (November 29, 1794)
# Kentucky (December 7, 1794)
# Maryland (December 26, 1794)
# Delaware (January 23, 1795)
# North Carolina (February 7, 1795)
Ratification was completed on February 7, 1795. The amendment was subsequently ratified by the following state:
# South Carolina (December 4, 1797)

References

1. Ratification of Constitutional Amendments

External links

★ National Archives: 11th Amendment

★ CRS Annotated Constitution: 11th Amendment