Jaffe, we begin by noting the Court’s use of may— as in, “a suit may fail ... if the relief requested ... will require affirmative action by the sovereign,” Larson, 337 U.S. at 691 n. 11, 69 S.Ct. 1457 (emphasis added) — rather than more commanding alternatives like must or will or shall. Louis L. Jaffe, Suits Against Governments and Officers: Sovereign Immunity, 77 Harv. L.Rev. 1, 34 (1963) (noting that if “may is read as may and not as must, it is unobjectionable,” but that a contrary reading would place footnote 11 at odds with “well-established doctrines”). Only by embracing this equivocation can we read footnote 11 in harmony with prior pronouncements. Consider the following statement from Ex parte Young: “There is no doubt that the court cannot co 608, 29 L.Ed. 805 (1886) (<HOLDING>); In re Ayers, 123 U.S. 443, 497-98, 502-03, 8
holding that sovereign immunity prevents suit to compel state comptroller general to levy a tax to fund redemption of revenue bond scrip holding that a state may waive its sovereign immunity holding that sovereign immunity prevents bondholders foreclosure suit holding that sovereign immunity prevents mandamus action to compel state officers to levy a tax to pay bondholders holding that state could not assert sovereign immunity defense where the state had waived immunity in state court and agreed to remove suit to federal court