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of the judicial law, we meet difficulties insurmountable to us, we must leave it to those departments of Government which have higher powers; to which, however, there may be no necessity to have recourse: Is it altogether a vain expectation, that a State may have other motives than such as arise from the apprehension of coercion, to carry into execution a judgment of the Supreme Court of the United States, though not conformable to their own ideas of justice? Besides, this argument takes it for granted, that the judgment of the Court will be against the State; it possibly may be in favor of the State; and the difficulty vanishes. Should judgment be given against the Plaintiff, could it be said to be void, because extra-judicial? If the Plaintiff, grounding himself upon that notion, should renew his suit against the State, in any mode in which she may permit herself to be sued in her own Courts, would the Attorney General for the State be obliged to go again into the merits of the case, because the matter, when here, was coram non judice? Might he not rely upon the judgment given by this Court in bar of the new suit? To me it seems clear that he might. And if a State may be brought before this Court, as a Defendant, I see no reason for confining the Plaintiff to proceed by way of petition; indeed there would even seem to be an impropriety in proceeding in that mode. When sovereigns are sued in their own Courts, such a method may have been established as the most respectful form of demand; but we are not now in a State-Court; and if sovereignty be an exemption from suit in any other than the sovereign’s own Courts, it follows that when a State, by adopting the Constitution, has agreed to be amenable to the judicial power of the United States, she has, in that respect, given up her right of sovereignty.

With respect to the service of the summons to appear, the manner in which it has been served seems to be as proper as any which could be devised for the purpose of giving notice of the suit, which is the end proposed by it, the Governor being the head of the Executive Department, and the Attorney General the law-officer, who generally represents the State in legal proceedings: And this mode is the less liable to exception, when it is considered, that in the suit brought in this Court by the State of Georgia against Brailsford and others, it is conceived in the name of the Governor on behalf of the State. If the opinion which I have delivered, respecting the liability of a State to be sued in this Court, should be the opinion of the Court, it will come in course to consider, what is the proper step to be taken for inducing appearance, none having been yet entered in behalf of the Defendant. A judgment by default, in the present stage of the business, and writ of enquiry of damages, would be