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Coeur d'Alene and Existential Categories for Sovereign Immunity Cases |
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Eric B. Wolff |
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| Individuals may sue state officers in federal court according to a simple rule most closely associated with Ex Parte Young and Jordan: plaintiffs may sue for prospective relief against state officers to stop an ongoing violation of federal law or to force compliance with federal law. This rule broke down in Idaho v. Coeur d'Alene Tribe of Idaho because it fails to accurately reflect how the Court conceptualizes threats to state sovereignty worthy of immunity, as well as federal interests in providing relief. In this Comment, the author attempts to show how prevailing sovereign immunity doctrine was conceptually bankrupt in Coeur d'Alene. The author then reconstructs how the Court may have conceived of the situation in Coeur d'Alene, building upon articles by Professors Louis Jaffe and Antonin Scalia. Finally, the Comment speculates on the future of Ex Parte Young and Edelman v. Jordan after Coeur d'Alene and proposes the Court look more to legal traditions and existential categories regarding sovereign immunity, as Professor Jaffe did, rather than addressing all sovereign immunity claims with an oversimplified analytic rule. | |
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Copyright
© 1998 by California Law Review, Inc. |
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