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Page Number: 15

10 

PENNEAST PIPELINE CO. v. NEW JERSEY 

Opinion of the Court 

cretion, use its sovereign powers, directly or through a cor-
poration created for that object, to construct bridges for the
accommodation of interstate commerce.”  Id., at 530.  These 
powers, we noted, could be exercised “with or without a con-
current act of the State in which the lands lie.”  Ibid. 

State property was not immune from the exercise of del-
egated eminent domain power.  In fact, this is not the first 
time New Jersey has tried to thwart such a delegation.  In 
Stockton v. Baltimore & N. Y. R. Co., 32 F. 9 (CC NJ 1887),
Justice  Bradley,  riding  circuit,  considered  a  challenge  by 
New Jersey to an Act of Congress authorizing a New York 
corporation to build a bridge on state-owned land.  Id., at 
9–11; see Act of June 16, 1886, ch. 417, 24 Stat. 78.  The 
Secretary of War had approved the plans for the bridge, as
required by the Act, and the corporation had begun prepar-
ing for construction.  32 F., at 11.  New Jersey sought an
injunction, arguing among other things that an out-of-state
corporation could not operate within its borders, and that 
the corporation could not take its land without its consent. 
Id., at 13, 17.  Justice Bradley dismissed these arguments, 
reasoning that “if congress, in the execution of its powers,
chooses to employ the intervention of a proper corporation, 
whether of the state, or out of the state, we see no reason 
why it should not do so.”  Id., at 14.  Justice Bradley also 
presciently  noted  that  New  Jersey’s  position,  if  accepted, 
would give rise to the “dilemma of requiring the consent of 
the state in almost every case of an interstate line of com-
munication by railroad, for hardly a case can arise in which 
some property belonging to a state will not be crossed.”  Id., 
at 17. 

Just a few years after Stockton, Justice Bradley’s views
were  adopted  by  the  full  Court.  In  Cherokee  Nation  v. 
Southern  Kansas  R.  Co.,  135  U. S.  641  (1890),  the  Chero-
kees argued that a private railroad company could not ex-
ercise the federal eminent domain power pursuant to an Act