摘要：Every war is comprised of a series of individual battles, each an attempt to
secure an intermediary strategic advantage in the service of a greater purpose.
Some ultimately prove to be relatively inconsequential. Others are
transformational. In Central Virginia Community College v. Katz1 a dramatic
campaign for control of sovereign immunity law was waged on the battlefield of
bankruptcy. The intermediate result was the Court's surprising holding, authored by
Justice Stevens, that adversary proceedings brought by a bankruptcy trustee against
state agencies to recover preferential transfers are not barred by the Eleventh
Amendment or any other font of state sovereign immunity.2 The larger war, of
course, is the Court's more than two-century-long struggle to define the outer limits
of the Eleventh Amendment and state sovereign immunity. We are compelled to
defer to the wisdom of historians for an accurate analysis of the final consequence
of the Katz skirmish¡ªthat is, whether it transforms the course of the war or is,
ultimately, merely aberrational. It is not too soon, however, to examine this
decision for evidence of the character of our most hallowed judicial institution and
the generals currently in command.
