"[4] The Court noted that the Constitution does not specifically provide for federal jurisdiction in suits between a citizen and a state, but Article III does give the federal courts jurisdiction over "all cases" arising under the Constitution and laws of the United States.

Justice Joseph Bradley, writing for the Court, first examined the discussions surrounding the ratification of the Constitution.

The Court then examined similar language in statements made by James Madison and John Marshall in the Virginia convention held to ratify the Constitution.

The Court suggested that the framers of the Constitution had not addressed the possibility of a citizen suing his own state because such a thing would simply be inconceivable to them.

Harlan thought that Chisholm had been decided correctly, based on the language of the Constitution at the time of the decision.

In the late 1990s, the Rehnquist court issued a series of decisions reinforcing state immunity from suit under the Eleventh Amendment, starting with Seminole Tribe v. Florida (1996).