State Has Sovereignty!!!!

[Codee]

Here I have posted another case to try to shed light on the difference between a "state" and the "state government." It is the government that is out of control NOT the state the WE CREATE(D) This idea is saddly lost in time and is not muched discussed or addressed in an idnirect manner.
This case also CLEARLY tells why you should/must sue malfesent officers in their "personal" capasity and not the state itself. The state does stand on sogvern immunity HOWEVER it is our immunity it stands on. The State government (its actors/officers) do not posses our immunity.

Poindexter v. Greenhow (1884), 114 U.S. 270, 29 L.Ed 185, 192-193, 5 S.Ct. 903.

(d) [quoting] Osborn v. Bank of U. S., 9 Wheat., 738, ... ["]...In the discussion of such questions the distinction between the government of a State and the State itself is important and should be observed. In common speech and common apprehension they are usually regarded as identical; and as ordinarily the acts of the government are the acts of the State, because within the limits of its delegation of power, the government of the State is generally confounded with the State itself, and often the former is meant when the latter is mentioned. The State itself is an ideal person, intangible, invisible, immutable. The government is an agent, and, within the sphere of the agency, a perfect representative; but outside of that it is a lawless usurpation. The Constitution of the State is the limit of the authority of its government, and both government and State are subject to the supremacy of the Constitution of the United States and of the laws made in pursuance thereof. So that, while it is true in respect to the government of a state, as was said in Langford v. U. S., 101 U.S., 341 [Bk. 25, L. ed. 1010], that the maxim that the king can do not wrong has no place in our system of government; yet it is also true, in respect to the State itself, that whatever wrong is attempted in its name is imputable to its government and not to the State, for, as it can speak and act only by law, whatever it does say and do must be lawful.That which, therefore, is unlawful because made so by the supreme law, the Constitution of the United States, is not the word or deed of the State, but the mere wrong and trespass of those individual persons who falsely speak and act in its name.

Post from http://www.suijuris.net/forum/travel...license-4.html

I realy think that now it is appropriate to discuss delegation of powers.... F!!! F!!! I wish Big Al were here!!!

[hooded50]

Codee, this is a good post. EVERYONE should read this.

This case simply states that, if a state actor acts against a true sovereign (one of "the people") without proper authority and jurisdiction, then the state actor himself is liable.

As the Supreme Court held in Chisholm v. Georgia, a state is an 'artificial person' capable by itself of nothing. "The state" never sues a sovereign, because "the state" only exists in the minds of men. It is the government of a state -those living breathing men and women who act on behalf of the state- who sue people. It is the signaure of a lawyer, and not of "the state" that appears on court paperwork.

[heyday]

Can I play Devil's Advocate?

SHAFFER v. HEITNER, 433 U.S. 186 (1977)

The Delaware courts rejected appellants' jurisdictional challenge by noting that this suit was brought as a quasi in rem proceeding. Since quasi in rem jurisdiction is traditionally based on attachment orseizure of property present in the jurisdiction, not on contacts between the defendant and the State, the courts considered appellants' claimed lack of contacts with Delaware to be unimportant. This categorical analysis assumes the continued soundness of the conceptual structure founded on the century-old case of Pennoyer v. Neff, 95 U.S. 714 (1878).

[...]

Mr. Justice Field's opinion for the Court focused on the territorial limits of the States' judicial powers. Although recognizing that the States are not truly independent sovereigns, Mr. Justice Field found that their jurisdiction was defined by the "principles of public law" that regulate the relationships among independent nations. The first of those principles was "that every State possesses exclusive jurisdiction and sovereignty over persons and property within its territory."

[...]
From our perspective, the importance of Pennoyer is not its result, but the fact that its principles and corollaries derived from them became the basic elements of the constitutional doctrine governing state-court jurisdiction. See, e. g., Hazard, A General Theory of State-Court Jurisdiction, 1965 Sup. Ct. Rev. 241 (hereafter Hazard). As we have noted, under Pennoyer state authority to adjudicate was based on the jurisdiction's power over either persons or property. This fundamental concept is embodied in the very vocabulary which we use to describe judgments. If a court's jurisdiction is based on its authority over the defendant's person, the action and judgment are denominated "in personam" and can impose a personal obligation on the defendant in favor of the plaintiff. If jurisdiction is based on the court's power over property within its territory, the action is called "in rem" or "quasi in rem." The effect of a judgment in such a case is limited to the property that supports jurisdiction and does not impose a personal liability on the property owner, since he is not before the court.
[see: "A judgment in rem affects the interests of all persons in designated property. A judgment quasi in rem affects the interests of particular persons in designated property. The latter is of two types. In one the plaintiff is seeking to secure a pre-existing claim in the subject property and to extinguish or establish the nonexistence of similar interests of particular persons. In the other the plaintiff seeks to apply what he concedes to be the property of the defendant to the satisfaction of a claim against him. Restatement, Judgments, 5-9." Hanson v. Denckla, 357 U.S. 235, 246 n. 12 (1958).]

PENNOYER v. NEFF, 95 U.S. 714 (1877)

[...] two well-established principles of public law respecting the jurisdiction of an independent State over persons and property. The several States of the Union are not, it is true, in every respect independent, many of the right and powers which originally belonged to them being now vested in the government created by the Constitution. But, except as restrained and limited by that instrument, they possess and exercise the authority of independent States, and the principles of public law to which we have referred are applicable to them. One of these principles is, that every State possesses exclusive jurisdiction and sovereignty over persons and property within its territory. As a consequence, every State has the power to determine for itself the civil status and capacities of its inhabitants; to prescribe the subjects upon which they may contract, the forms and solemnities with which their contracts shall be executed, the rights and obligations arising from them, and the mode in which their validity shall be determined and their obligations enforced; and also the regulate the manner and conditions upon which property situated within such territory, both personal and real, may be acquired, enjoyed, and transferred. The other principle of public law referred to follows from the one mentioned; that is, that no State can exercise direct jurisdiction and authority over persons or property without its territory. Story, Confl. Laws, c. 2; Wheat. Int. Law, pt. 2, c. 2.

The State, for example, has absolute right to prescribe the conditions upon which the marriage relation between its own citizens shall be created, and the causes for w ich it may be dissolved.

Oh, it get's "better."

As was said by the Court of Exchequer in Vallee v. Dumergue, 4 Exch. 290, 'It is not contrary to natural justice that a man who has agreed to receive a particular mode of notification of legal proceedings should be bound by a judgment in which that particular mode of notification has been followed, even though he may not have actual notice of them.' See also The Lafayette Insurance Co. v. French et al., 18 How. 404, and Gillespie v. Commercial Mutual Marine Insurance Co., 12 Gray ( Mass.), 201. Nor do we doubt that a State, on creating corporations or other institutions for pecuniary or charitable purposes, may provide a mode in which their conduct may be investigated, their obligations enforced, or their charters revoked, which shall require other than personal service upon their officers or members. Parties becoming members of such corporations or institutions would hold their
interest subject to the conditions prescribed by law. Copin v. Adamson, Law Rep. 9 Ex. 345.

John C. Calhoun's Remarks in the Senate 15 February 1833

[...]

Notwithstanding all that has been said, I may say that neither the Senator from Delaware (Mr. Clayton), nor any other who has spoken on the same side, has directly and fairly met the great question at issue: Is this a Federal Union? a union of States, as distinct from that of individuals? Is the sovereignty in the several States, or in the American people in the aggregate? The very language which we are compelled to use when speaking of our political institutions affords proof conclusive as to its real character. The terms union, federal, united, all imply a combination of sovereignties, a confederation of States. They never apply to an association of individuals. Who ever heard of the United State of New York, of Massachusetts, or of Virginia? Who ever heard the term federal or union applied to the aggregation of individuals into one community? Nor is the other point less clear--that the sovereignty is in the several States, and that our system is a union of twenty-four sovereign powers, under a constitutional compact, and not of a divided sovereignty between the States severally and the United States? In spite of all that has been said, I maintain that sovereignty is in its nature indivisible. It is the supreme power in a State, and we might just as well speak of half a square, or half of a triangle, as of half a sovereignty. It is a gross error to confound the *exercise* of sovereign powers with *sovereignty* itself, or the *delegation* of such powers with the *surrender* of them. A sovereign may delegate his powers to be exercised by as many agents as he may think proper, under such conditions and with such limitations as he may impose; but to surrender any portion of his sovereignty to another is to annihilate the whole. The Senator from Delaware (Mr. Clayton) calls this metaphysical reasoning, which he says he cannot comprehend. If by metaphysics he means that scholastic refinement which makes distinctions without difference, no one can hold it in more utter contempt than I do; but if, on the contrary, he means the power of analysis and combination--that power which reduces the most complex idea into its elements, which traces causes to their first principle, and, by the power of generalization and combination, unites the whole in one harmonious system--then, so far from deserving contempt, it is the highest attribute of the human mind. It is the power which raises man above the brute--which distinguishes his faculties from mere sagacity, which he holds in common with inferior animals. It is this power which has raised the astronomer from being a mere gazer at the stars to the high intellectual eminence of a Newton or a Laplace, and astronomy itself from a mere observation of isolated facts into that noble science which displays to our admiration the system of the universe. And shall this high power of the mind, which has effected such wonders when directed to the laws which control the material world, be forever prohibited, under a senseless cry of metaphysics, from being applied to the high purposes of political science and legislation? I hold them to be subject to laws as fixed as matter itself, and to be as fit a subject for the application of the highest intellectual power. Denunciation may, indeed, fall upon the philosophical inquirer into these first principles, as it did upon Galileo and Bacon, when they first unfolded the great discoveries which have immortalized their names; but the time will come when truth will prevail in spite of prejudice and denunciation, and when politics and legislation will be considered as much a science as astronomy and chemistry.

Continued...

[heyday]

State Sovereignty. [The Old Guard / Volume 1, Issue 7, July 1863]

This right of the people to self-government is inalienable and irnprescriptible.
It belongs as much to the people as a
mans life belongs to its possessor
It belongs as much to the people. This
is the great doctrine of the Declaration
of Independence. We shall not spend
time to prove it, because it is the admitted principle on which this government was founded. Knock this away,
and the government established by our
fathers is at an end. Whether the work
of destruction is accomplished by Jeffer-
son Davis or by Abraham Lincoln is of
no sort of consequence to us or our children.

Now this right this power to
govern is called sovereignty. It is the
original, the supreme power.

In the American sense, sovereignty is the general will of the people.

From its very
nature, it is one and indivisible and
incommunicable: that is, it cannot be
divided and it cannot be communicated,
any more than a man s will can be
divided and transmitted to another.

A mans will may commission another to
exercise its powers, but it cannot give away or transfer itself.

Hence sovereignty always remains with the people,
as necessarily as the human will is the
incommunicable property of the individual to whom God gave it.

The will is the sovereignty of the man, as the general will of the people is the sovereignty of the State.

This is what our fathers meant when they pronounced it inalienable. The sovereign may delegate the exercise of its powers that is, commission as many agents to act for it as it pleases ; but the agent, thus acting for the sovereign, does not himself become sovereign, any more than the man whom you commission to do business for you becomes yourself.

He acts with such powers as you have delegated to him, but, never can acquire any of the sovereign attributes of your own will.


So with government: it is not, correctly speaking, sovereign, any more than it is the people.

The government is but the minister or commissioner of
sovereignty.

Government is not an original, self-existing power ; it is an intermediate power, charged simply with the exercise of the peoples sovereign will that is, with the execution of the laws. All its powers are of the nature of a commission, and therefore destitute of sovereignty.

When President Lincoln was in Congress in 1848,he uttered the following truth, based upon the principle we are now affirming:

Any people anywhere having the
power, have the right to rise up and
shake off the existing government, and
form another one that suits them better.

Sovereignty, then, is the attribute of
the people and not of the government.
The sovereign people of this country
originally formed communities called
States. So far as any other govern-
mental organization was concerned,
these States were independent sovereigns
bodies, because each represented the
aggregate will of its own sovereign
people. Each State was independent
of every other. Massachusetts was as
independent of South Carolina as South
Carolina was of the empire of China.
The sovereignty of each was perfect;
and as we have already illustrated, this
sovereignty was inalienable and incommunicable.

The State could no more
give away its sovereignty than a man
can give away his will. But the States
agreed, in certain specified matters, to
exercise their sovereignty jointly, which
agreement formed the Union, and the
Constitution was drawn as the bond between the high contracting sovereign parties. The parties to this agreement were the States, in their independent, organized sovereign character, and not the people of all the States consolidated into one political mass.

Each State signed the agreement separately, and
in its own time. Maryland was the first
to accept the Constitution, and Rhode
Island the last, which did not ratify the
Constitution until two years after Maryland had accepted it.

The choice of accepting or rejecting the
Constitution was an act of sovereignty,
which each State exercised for itself as a free and
independent sovereign body. In the
original compact the colonies declared
themselves to be free and independent
States, with full power to levy war,
conclude peace, contract alliances,
establish commerce, and to do all other acts
and things which independent States
may of right do.

[...]

We have
only to reflect that the formation of the
Federal Union was the voluntary act of
sovereign and independent states. The
Federal Government is not therefore a.
sovereign, but a dependent body. Its
powers are not original, but derived.


All its powers are
only delegated.

In the Federal Constitution they are called delegated powers.

Delegated powers are not sovereign powers. By delegating the exercise of certain of their powers to the
Federal Government, the States surrendered no iota of their sovereignty. A sovereign power can delegate the exercise of its powers to as many agents as it pleases, and be none the less sovereign itself. The exercise of sovereign powers does not constitute the agent a sovereign.

From the fact that the Federal Government exercises certain sovereign powers delegated to it by the joint sovereignty of the States, it no more becomes a sovereign body than the agent of the Rothehilds in New York becomes himself the Rothehilds.
The Rothehilds can at any moment recall the powers of their agent. So can the sovereign states recall the powers which they jointly delegated to the Federal Government.

it no more becomes a sovereign body than the agent of the Rothehilds in New York becomes himself the Rothehilds.
The Rothehilds can at any moment recall the powers of their agent. - Darn, them suckers show up in the oddest places,don't they-heyday

[...]


The Federal Government is therefore
a government without sovereignty and
without a people. It is the creature of
the sovereign states, and little more
than the general agent of the state
governments.

Said Mr. Madison Who are the parties to the government?


The people, but not the people as com-
posing one great body; but the people
as composing thirteen sovereignties.


The Federal Government is a Government of States, and not of the people as a consolidated national body.

The President is elected not by a majority of the whole people, but by a majority of the states.

There was a majority of more than one million of the peoples votes against Mr. Lincoln; but a majority of the states was for him.

So the office of President represents the State
Governments. The Senate of the United
States is not elected by the people as
one body, but by the State Legislature.


So of all the officers of the Federal Government represent, and are dependent upon the Governments of the States. All their powers are derived from the sovereign State Governments.


If a majority of the states should refuse to choose Presidential electors, or to elect United States Senators, the Federal Government would cease to have any legal existence.


[...]

Mr. Madison, the father of the Constitution, said The states, then, being the parties to the Constitutional Compact, and in their sovereign capacity, it follows of necessity that there can be no tribunal above their authority.

Mr.Hamilton, in the New York Constitutional Convention said, The states can never lose their powers till the whole people of America are robbed of their liberties. These must go together; they must support each other, or meet a common fate.

And when we see the Federal Government attempting to subvert, or override the governments of the states, we may be sure that it is the liberty of the people that the usurpers are driving at.

Let us repeat, that sovereignty is as much the property of the states which formed the Union, as the will is the property of the man to whom God gave it. To deny the sovereignty of the states, is to strike down the whole theory of government established by our fathers.

It was by an act of sovereignty that the states formed the Federal Government. If they had sovereign power to form the Government, they could be no less sovereign after the Government was formed. The Government is the creature of their sovereignty.

And, as we have seen, this
sovereignty is, in the nature of things,
inalienable and incommunicable. It
may delegate its powers, but it can
never lose itself, any more than a man
can lose his will, or transfer it to another.


excerpted from

State Sovereignty. [The Old Guard / Volume 1, Issue 7, July 1863" allowScriptAccess="sameDomain" quality="best" bgcolor="#ffffff" scale="noScale" salign="TL" FlashVars="playerMode=embedded"> ]


to be continued

[Livefire]

Thanks Codee....

That something we all need to be reminded of!

[heyday]

But immunity from suit is a high attribute of sovereignty,-a prerogative of the state itself,-which cannot be availed of by public agents when sued for their own torts. The 11th Amendment was not intended to afford them freedom from liability in any case where, under color of their office, they have injured one of the state's citizens. To grant them such immunity would be to create a privileged class, free from liability for wrongs inflicted or injuries threatened. Public agents must be liable to the law, unless they are to be put above the law. For how 'can these principles of individual liberty and right be maintained if, when violated, the judicial tribunals are forbidden to visit penalties upon individual offenders . . . whenever they interpose the shield of the state? . . . The whole frame and scheme of the political institutions of this country, state and Federal protest' against extending to any agent the sovereign's exemption from legal process. Poindexter v. Greenhow, 114 U.S. 270, 291 , 29 S. L. ed.185, 193, 5 Sup. Ct. Rep. 903, 962.


The many claims of immunity from suit have therefore been uniformly denied, where the action was brought for injuries done or threatened by public officers. If they were indeed agents, acting for the state, they- though not exempt from suit-could successfully defend by exhibiting the valid power of attorney or lawful authority under which they acted. Cunningham v. Macon & B. R. Co. 109 U.S. 446, 452 , 27 S. L. ed. 992, 994, 3 Sup. Ct. Rep. 292, 609. But if it appeared that they proceeded under an unconstitutional statute, their justification failed, and their claim of immunity disappeared on the production of the void statute. Besides, neither a state nor an individual can confer upon an agent authority to commit a tort so as to excuse the perpetrator. In such cases the law of agency has no application,-the wrongdoer is treated as a principal, and individually liable for the damages inflicted, and subject to injunction against the commission of acts causing irreparable injury.

[..many cites of examples omitted.]

Other cases might be cited which deny public boards, agents, and officers immunity from suit. But the principle underlying the decisions is the same. All recognize that the state, as a sovereign, is not subject to suit; that the state cannot be enjoined; and that the state's officers, when sued, cannot be restrained from enforcing the state's laws, or be held liable for the consequences flowing from obedience to the state's command.
But a void act is neither a law nor a command. It is a nullity. It confers no authority. It affords no protection. Whoever seeks to enforce unconstitutional statutes, or to justify under them, or to obtain immunity through them, fails in his defense and in his claim of exemption from suit.

As a part of its plea to the jurisdiction, the college also claimed that 'it never had any interest or title in the land described in the complaint, or in any other property connected with the establishment and maintenance of Clemson Agricultural College of South Carolina, all of it being the property of the state of South Carolina.' And it is argued that the court could take no jurisdiction of a case against a public corporation which, at most, could only result in a judgment unenforceable by levy and sale under execution.
As a matter of fact, the record indicates that besides the state's annual appropriation and the interest on securities held under the residuary clause of Dr. Clemson's will, the college has other sources of income. It appears to own some land in fee simple. The charter authorizes it to receive bequests. So that if the Fort Hill place is not subject to levy and sale, it does not follow that the institution may not now or hereafter own property out of which a judgment in plaintiff's favor could be satisfied. Besides, we have no right to proceed on the theory that if, at the end of the litigation, plaintiff establishes his right to damages, the judgment would not be paid. These suggestions, though made in a plea to the jurisdiction, afford no reason why the college should be granted immunity from suit, when it is claimed that, in violation of the Constitution, it has taken private property for its corporate purposes without compensation.
Cited from:

HOPKINS v. CLEMSON AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE OF SOUTH CAROLINA , 221 U.S. 636 (1911)

(Does this make laws protecting state actor's retirement funds from liability in suits unconstitutional where the unlawful acts unconstitutionally damaging a suitor is shown to have created a pecuniary interest to that actor's reliance upon that cash cow? )

[heyday]

But in none of these cases was the same question presented that is presented here, nor were all of the cases cited by plaintiff in error to sustain the jurisdiction of this court cases in the Federal courts. Poindexter v. Greenhow, 114 U.S. 270 , 29 L. ed. 185, 5 Sup. Ct. Rep. 903, 962, and Chaffin v. Taylor, 114 U.S. 309 , 29 L. ed. 198, 5 Sup. Ct. Rep. 924, 962, were brought in the state courts [209 U.S. 211, 225] of Virginia, and they involve questions very much like those in the case at bar. Poindexter v. Greenhow was an action of detinue for personal property distrained by Greenhow for delinquent taxes, in payment of which Poindexter had tendered coupons cut from bonds issued by the state of Virginia under act of the state passed in 1871. This act, it was held, constituted a contract between the holder of the coupons and the state that they should be received for taxes, which contract, it was further held, was impaired by the subsequent act under which Greenhow justified the distraint of Poindexter's property.
It was urged that the action could not be maintained because it was substantially an action against the state, to which it had not assented. It was further urged that the remedy was afforded of a right to recover back all the taxes after payment under protest, and that this constituted the sole remedy.
The first contention was discussed at length and rejected. The court said, in effect, that the defendant in the action was sued as a wrongdoer, and could only justify himself under a valid law. And it was said: 'The state has passed no such law, for it cannot; and what it cannot do, it certainly, in contemplation of law, has not done. The Constitution of the United States and its own contract, both irrepealable by any act on its part, are the law of Virginia; and that law made it the duty of the defendant to receive the coupons tendered in payment of taxes, and declared every step to enforce the tax, thereafter taken, to be without warrant of law. . . . He stands, then, stripped of his official character, and, confessing a personal violation of the plaintiff's rights, for which he must personally answer, he is without defense.' (Italics ours.)
A distinction was made between the state and its government, and it was said that an officer representing and acting for the latter is not an agent of the former. That and other cases were reviewed in Belknap v. Schild, 161 U.S. 10 , 40 L. ed. 599, 16 Sup. Ct. Rep. 443, and Mr. Justice Gray, speaking for the court, said: 'In a suit to which the state is neither formally nor really a party, its officers, although acting by its order and for its benefit, may be re- [209 U.S. 211, 226] strained by injunction, when the remedy at law is inadequate, from doing positive acts, for which they are personally and individually liable, taking or injuring the plaintiff's property, contrary to a plain official duty requiring no exercise of discretion, and in violation of the Constitution or laws of the United States.' Cases were cited. And again: 'But no injunction can be issued against officers of a state to restrain or control the use of property already in the possession of the state, or money in its treasury when the suit is commenced; or to compel the state to perform its obligations; or where the state has otherwise such an interest in the object of the suit as to be a necessary party.' The case and those cited expose the error, which appears with a kind of periodicity, varied in presentation, to accommodate the particular exigency, that a state is inevitably brought into court when the execution of its laws is arrested by a suit against its officers. It seems to be an obvious consequence that, as a state can only perform its functions through its officers, a restraint upon them is a restraint upon its sovereignty from which it is exempt, without its consent, in the state tribunals, and exempt by the 11th Amendment of the Constitution of the United States in the national tribunals. The error is in the universality of the conclusion, as we have seen. Necessarily, to give adequate protection to constitutional rights a distinction must be made between valid and invalid state laws, as determining the character of the suit against state officers. And the suit at bar illustrates the necessity. If a suit against state officers is precluded in the national courts by the 11th Amendment to the Constitution, and may be forbidden by a state to its courts, as it is contended in the case at bar that it may be, without power of review by this court, it must be evident that an easy way is open to prevent the enforcement of many provisions of the Constitution; and the 14th Amendment, which is directed at state action, could be unllified as to much of its operation. And it will not do to say that the argument is drawn from extremes. Constitutional provisions are based on the possibility of extremes. There need not, however, be imagination of extremes, if by extremes be meant a deliberate purpose to prevent the assertion of constitutional rights. Zeal for policies, estimable, it may be, of themselves, may overlook or underestimate private rights. The swift execution of the law may seem the only good, and the rights and interests which obstruct it be regarded as a kind of outlawry. See Ex parte Young [ 209 U.S. 123 , 52 L. ed. --, 28 Sup. Ct. Rep. 441], where this subject is fully discussed and the cases reviewed.
cited from: GENERAL OIL CO. v. CRAIN, 209 U.S. 211 (1908)

NEXT:

Opinions of the Council of Three. The Nature of this Government.

[The American Whig review. / Volume 6, Issue 4, Oct 1847]

Excellent description of the three-tiered sovereign stucture between citizen, state, and nation!

[charlesa6]

Awesome!! keep up the good work, codee.

[Codee]

Originally Posted by Livefire

Thanks Codee....

That something we all need to be reminded of!

Wow! I thought this one was heading for the archives.

State = Sovereign

Government = Administrators

[Sandman]

Here is one to consider....

U.S. Supreme Court

HAFER v. MELO, 502 U.S. 21 (1991)

502 U.S. 21
http://www.constitution.org/ussc/502-021.txt

State officers may be held personally liable for damages under 1983 based upon actions taken in their official capacities.