Page:United States Reports, Volume 209.djvu/201

 209 U. 8. Hsm,, ., dissenli. the Federal Circuit Court; for, the intangible thing, called a State, however extensive its powers, can never appear or be represented or known in any court in a litigated case, except by and through its officers. When, therefore, the Federal court forbade the defendant Young, as Attorney General of Minne- sota, from taking any action, suit, step or proceeding what- ever looking to the enforcement of the statutes in question, it said in effect to the State of Minnesota: "It is true that the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively or to its people, and it is true that under the Con- stitution the judicial power of the United States does not extend to any suit brought against a State by a citizen of another State or by a citizen or subject of a foreign State, yet the Federal court djudgcs that you, the State, although a sovereign for many important governmental purpos, shall not appear in your own courts, by your law officer, with the view of. enforcing, or even for determining the validity of the state enactme5ts which the Federal court has, upon a pre- liminary hearing, declared to be in viotion of the Constitu- tion of the United States." This principle, if firmly established, would work a radical change in our governmental system. It would inaugurate a new era in the American judicial system and in the relations of the National and state governments. It would enable the subordinate Federal courts to supervise and control the official action of the States as if they were "dependencies" or prov- inces. It would place the States of the Union in a condition of inferiority never dreamed of when the Constitution was adopted or when the Eleventh Amendment was made a part of the Supreme Law of the Land. I cannot suppose that the great men who framed the Constitution ever thought the time would come when a subordinate Federal court, having no power to compel a State, in its corporate capacity, to pear before it as a litigant, would yet assume to deprive a State of the right to be represented in its own courts by its

�