Page:United States Reports, Volume 209.djvu/230

 204 OCTOBER TERM, 1907. that could not be done, and that such a result would, for most purposes, practically obliterate the Eleventh Amendment and place the States, in vital particulars, as absolutely under the control of the subordinate Federal courts, as if they were capable of being directly sued. I put the matter in ths way, because to forbid the Attorney.General of a State (under the penalty of beirg punished as for contempt) from representing his State in suits of a partiu]r kind, in its own courts, is to forbid the State itself from appearing and being heard in such suits. Neither the words nor the policy of the Eleventh Amend- ment will, under our former decisions, justify any order of a Federal court the necessary effect of which will be to exclude a State from its own courts. Such an order attended by such results cannot, I submit, be sustained consistently with the powers which the States, according to the uniform declara- tions of this court, possess under the Constitution. I am justified, by what this court has heretofore declared, in now saying that the men who framed the Constitution and who caused th adoption of the Eleventh Amendment would have been amazed by the suggestion that a State of the Union can be prevented by an order of a subordinate Federal court from being represented by its Attorney General in a suit brought by it in one of its own curts; and that such an order would be inconsistent with the dignity of the States as involved in their constitutional 'immunity from the judicial pr.ocess of the Fed- eral courts (except in the limited cases in which they may constitutionally be made 'parties in this court) and would be attended by most pernicious results. I dissent from the opinion and judgment.

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