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The amendments in the Bill of Rights seem to be viewed by many people as part of the original constitution. It looks to me that later amendments can be categorized as either clarifications of the constitution or alterations to it. The Eleventh Amendment would fall under the category of clarification:
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.
I don’t believe that the founders ever intended to infringe upon the sovereignty of states simply because a citizen of another state had a grievance against them. The initial intent was probably to have an impartial judge of such cases but they discovered that citizens could abuse that clause. Today we need to find ways to stop Congress from abusing some other clauses of the constitution.
3 replies on “Constitutional Amendment 11”
Amendments 10 and 11 both deal with maintaining state sovereignty. The 11th was ratified to clarify this with respect to a case in which the Supremes took original jurisdiction. I think the more serious matter with respect to sovereignty of the states (and as you point out, Congress' abuse of other Constitution clauses) is the use of the Commerce Clause (Article I, Section 8, Clause 3). This has really been used since the FDR-packed courts to cram down the States' collective throats any laws enacted by the US Congress. This has been–in my opinion–the foundation for the creation of the egregious usurption of unconstitutional power by the federal government over the past 70 years. Through the improper use of the Commerce Clause and supported by the Supremes the individual states have lost significant sovereignty and have become nothing more than mere puppet states of the concentrated power in Washington–clearly in sharp contrast to the ideals of the Framers.
The abuse of the commerce clause is a good reason to support the Enumerated powers act to require that each bill declare where they get their authority for the bill – read more about it here http://www.downsizedc.org/etp/campaigns/87
Great reference. It is very scary what has happened over the past few decades. It gets worse and worse each year, but the People share a lot of blame because they adopted the Right to Entitlement. It is getting scarier now that President Obama appears to be expanding the Executive authority beyond all reasonable powers enumerated in the Constitution. All checks and balances on spending have completely vanished and we have such a weak Congress right now that they do not stand up and say stop. Pelosi and Reid are useless leaders and Barack and his gang are just walking right over them. Even though they are the same party, I would at least wish they would put up a fight on the grounds of maintaining power in Congress as the Legislative Branch–rather than the Rubber Stamping of the Emperor Branch. I can only imagine what Adams, Madison, and Jefferson might be thinking.