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The Eleventh Amendment

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The Eleventh Amendment

The Eleventh Amendment was passed in the 1800s to stop states from being sued without their consent. The amendment was first created so a citizen from another state without their permission could not sue states. Now the eleventh amendment has been expanded to mean that a citizen from another state, a citizen of its own state, or the government/citizen of a foreign country cannot sue a state unless they give permission. This amendment changed America by giving more power to the states by taking it from the Supreme Court. This report will show this by telling the its creation, people’s feelings towards it, the debates/controversies of it, affect and court cases involving the amendment, and how the government has violated …show more content…

Georgia. In 1777, a man from South Carolina named Robert Farquhar sold supplies to Georgia. Georgia planned to pay him back until they learned that Farquhar was a British loyalist. Sadly, Farquhar died before he could collect Georgia’s debt, but the executor of his estate, Alexander Chisholm, was not going to give up. He took the case to the Supreme Court in 1793 and won. Georgia and other states protested this decision saying states had “Sovereign Immunity”. Sovereign Immunity says that states can do as they please and face no legal consequences. The court denied their claim saying Article three, section two allowed them to try the case. This only caused more protest about the Supreme Court having too much power. During this time, America was just beginning to build itself up to be the independent country known today. Everyone was just getting use to the new authority, for example, the Whiskey Rebellion happened only five months before on September 1, 1794. Understandably, there were a lot of debates and controversies when about the Chisholm case and Eleventh amendment. Everyone wanted to explain their viewing on the case; all determined that their opinion was the right …show more content…

The idea suggested by a Massachusetts senator, Caleb Strong, was built off of the views of a federalist by the name of James Iredell. He believed the United States was a representation of the powers the states gave up, but it had no right to take what powers belonged to the states. The United States consisted of a group of sovereign states. The United States can only control the states with the power they allowed the government to have. Many senators and representatives liked the idea as well as Patrick Henry, James Madison, John Marshall, and Alexander Hamilton. The idea of state sovereign had been around for a long time and there was no reason to change things. The amendment passed Congress on March 4th 1794 and ratified by every state, but Pennsylvania and New Jersey on February 7, 1795. This amendment affected the whole country, because now the Supreme Court has been weakened and the states had more power. Though, the amendment only says one cannot sue states, but it allows individuals, such as, a state official to be

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