State Sovereign Immunity: A Reference Guide to the United States Constitution

(Hardback)

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The Eleventh Amendment's guarantee of state sovereign immunity has become the Supreme Court's primary tool for articulating its federalism doctrine, and its interpretation is essential to understanding American federalism. As part of a new series of Greenwood's comprehensive reference guides to the United States Constitution, Professor Durchslag's edition on the Eleventh Amendment's guarantee of state sovereign immunity is the most thorough and up-to-date treatment of that amendment. The Court's interpretation of the Eleventh Amendment over the past two centuries has been an attempt to balance the sovereign interests of the states against the primacy of federal law, and is currently its primary means of articulating its federalist doctrine. Beginning with an extensive history of the Eleventh Amendment and the ratification debates surrounding it, Durchslag proceeds to a chronological discussion of the development of the "first generation" of Eleventh Amendment jurisprudence from 1793 - 1890. The book then proceeds topically, tracing the developments of the various doctrinal components of the Amendment, and includes suggestions as to how they may evolve. The work concludes with an erudite bibliographic essay to guide the reader to relevant primary and secondary works, and is fully indexed. For constitutional students, scholars, and legal practitioners, as well as for political scientists and historians studying the constitution or federalism.

Author Bio

MELVYN R. DURSCHLAG is Professor of Law at Case Western Reserve University School of Law.