Blog Post

The 11th Amendment: Correcting the Supreme Court in action

February 7, 2021 | by NCC Staff

The 11th Amendment was ratified on February 7, 1795. The first amendment after the Bill of Rights also represented the first use of congressional power to contradict a Supreme Court decision.

The case of Chisholm v. Georgia in 1793 was the first significant decision handed down by the Court, and it was so controversial that lawmakers moved quickly to nullify its findings.

The controversy had its roots in the Revolutionary War. In 1777, the Executive Council of Georgia authorized the purchase of needed supplies from a South Carolina merchant and businessman. After receiving the supplies, Georgia didn’t pay as promised. After the merchant’s death, the executor of his estate, Alexander Chisholm, took Georgia to court to collect the debt. Georgia said that it was a sovereign state and not subject to the authority of the federal courts unless it decided to be sued, and thus refused to appear.

In a 4-to-1 decision, the Court said that “the people of the United States” intended to bind the states to the national government, and that supreme or sovereign power was retained by citizens themselves, not by the “artificial person” of the State of Georgia.

Therefore, the Court held, the federal courts had the power to hear disputes between private citizens and States, under the Court’s interpretation of the Constitution’s Article III, Section 2, the states did not enjoy sovereign immunity.

The Chisholm decision came about during an ongoing popular constitutional movement to amend the Constitution in order to secure the understanding, as promised by the Federalists, that federal courts would respect the retained rights of the people in the states and treat states as retaining their sovereign immunity. Soon after the Chisholm decision, Massachusetts was sued and John Hancock, in his final public act, summarized the outrage:

There are certain inherent principles in the Constitution . . . which can never be surrendered, without essentially changing the nature, or destroying the existence of the Government. . . . A consolidation of all the states into one Government, would at once endanger the Nation as a Republic, and eventually divide the States united, or eradicate its principles which we have contended for.

Once the issue reached Congress, it was seen by most lawmakers as a clear intrusion on state powers and required congressional action to address it, with Massachusetts Senator Caleb Strong introducing the amendment. The 11th Amendment as proposed on March 4, 1794 and ratified on February 7, 1795, specifically overturned Chisholm, and it broadly prevented suits against states by citizens of other states or by citizens or subjects of foreign jurisdictions.

It read, “The judicial power of the United States shall not be construed to extend to any suit in law or equity, commenced or prosecuted against one of the United States by citizens of another state, or by citizens or subjects of any foreign state.” The amendment narrows conditions needed for a state to be sued, and it was seen as a victory for the sovereign immunity of the states.

Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated the congressional action taken in overturning the Chisholm decision.

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