State Sovereignty
The residual governmental authority of the states not delegated to the federal government, protected by the Tenth and Eleventh Amendments.
Expect a fact pattern where Congress directly orders state officials to administer a federal program — collect background-check data, enforce a regulatory scheme, or keep a law on the books. The tell is compulsion of the state itself: that triggers anti-commandeering and the answer is unconstitutional. The trap is forgetting Congress’s two workarounds — conditional spending (money with strings that are unambiguous, related to the program, and not coercive) and generally applicable regulation hitting private parties and states alike (Reno v. Condon). Murphy v. NCAA (2018) extended the doctrine: Congress also cannot prohibit states from legislating, not just compel them.
Don’t confuse sovereignty with federalism (the broad structural division of power) or the Commerce Clause (the affirmative grant Congress over-reaches via Lopez/Morrison). Immunity traps: the Eleventh Amendment doesn’t reach suits against local governments and counties, but state court is no loophole — Alden v. Maine bars private damages suits against a nonconsenting state even there. Ex parte Young lets you sue the officer for prospective injunctive relief — never back-pay from the treasury (Edelman).
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