Hey, that’s super-nice of you to write!

I don’t disagree. My bone to pick is a different one, focused on citizens (of any state) versus a sovereign (any sovereign), but likewise wrapped up in the sovereignty polemic. And that polemic, after almost expiring as courts tended toward giving real meaning to the idea of the supremacy of the people, has been rendered extraordinarily messy as judges on the right worked to insulate police and other authoritarian state actors from accountability for actions injurious to the ordinary and vulnerable in the population. And I do believe that the overruling of Hall was a natural consequence of that runaway “conservative” jurisprudence (although I am loathe to dignify this kind of right-wing judicial activism with the term “jurisprudence”).

While I am at, I it must emphasize again how much I absolutely love your blog. Genuine clarity of reasoning and expression is far too rare in our profession.

I don’t know, Stephen. Even under Hall, many states accorded each other sovereign immunity as a matter of comity. And this is not a question of rights without remedies, since there are remedies under the laws of the state in question. And if there aren’t, then perhaps sister-states should think twice before doing more for citizens of another state than that state does for its own citizens. So we agree that this new decision is wrong, but I wouldn’t go too far.

Unfortunately, this trend was brutally reversed as Republicans and “conservatives,” railing against ostensibly “activist” “liberal” judges (a false and dishonest charge), began packing the courts with radical, activist right-wing judges with an agenda of promoting authoritarianism and governmental power and lack of accountability, particularly with respect to the causes of the more vulnerable members of the community.

The Supreme Court then made a morass and muddle of sovereign immunity and Eleventh Ammendment jurisprudence (not to mention qualified immunity), conflating almost everything, generating and misapplying cases like Alden v. Maine. The overruling of Nevada v. Hall in my view was the natural and inevitable consequence of this trend.