The Supreme Court Fails Its First Test

The legal concept of state sovereign immunity has been controversial since the ratification of the Constitution in 1789. In 1793 the Supreme Court ruled that the states had no sovereign immunity in the famous case of Chisholm v. Georgia. This ruling was reversed by the Eleventh Amendment to the Constitution. The Eleventh Amendment itself has also been very controversial. We study the history and development of sovereign immunity jurisprudence from the Founding of the United States until the present time. The controversy had a resurgence beginning in the 1960 s led by Justice William Joseph Brennan, Jr. who argued that state sovereign immunity had no constitutional basis. This has been the position of the Court liberals. The Rehnquist Court ruled that state sovereign immunity is embedded in the Tenth and Eleventh Amendments to the Constitution. This book argues that state sovereign immunity is embedded in the Constitution itself whether part of the Tenth and Eleventh Amendments or not.

Autorentext

William Anderson LaBach was born December 29, 1938 in Lexington, Kentucky. He received his A.B. degree from Transylvania College in 1959. He received M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in mathematics from the University of Illinois in 1963 and 1965. He received his J.D. degree from the University of Kentucky in 1975 and practices law in Georgetown, Kentucky.