Opinion ID: 107057
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: the removal of the definition of inland waters.

Text: As originally drafted, § 2 of the Holland bill defined inland waters, which extended to the coast line, as including all estuaries, ports, harbors, bays, channels, straits, historic bays, and sounds, and all other bodies of water which join the open sea. [25] This definition would of course unquestionably give California title to submerged lands lying under all its historically recognized bays and straits as part of California's inland waters, quite apart from the fact that they might also lie within California's historic boundary of inland waters plus marginal sea. The Deputy Legal Adviser of the State Department testified that such a legislative definition of inland waters, even though limited to the purpose of the bill of affecting property rights between the United States and the States, a purely domestic matter, [26] might possibly embarrass the State Department in its foreign relations if the Department asserted a different definition of the words inland waters in its relations with foreign nations. [27] The Attorney General warned that to attempt to define the coastline in a few words might increase rather than diminish litigation. [28] As a result, Senator Cordon, the Acting Chairman of the Committee, at the conclusion of the hearings quoted the language defining inland waters for purposes of the Act and said: That language was objectionable to the State Department and to the Department of Justice. That isn't, in itself, in my opinion, reason to strike it, but I am of the opinion that the objections were sound. The matter of inland waters is one that has been defined time and time again by the courts, not, I believe, in any one all-inclusive definition, but it was felt that the use of these words were an attempted legislative definition of the term `inland waters,' and it was inadvisable for us in this bill, which is a transfer of title, to attempt to make law in the other field of what is or is not inland water. [29] At another point he explained that the language was struck simply because It was sought not to get into that field because you were in a field then where, in our attempts to take care of a purely domestic matter, we might be putting the United States on record with a precedent which we intended only to apply domestically but which might be applied internationally. [30] He emphasized that The elimination of the language still follows what the Chair understands to be the philosophy of the bill, that we are putting the States where they thought they were, and not attempting now to create either a situation in law or a basis for a rule of evidence that may or may not have been sound when the States came into the Union. [31] Senator Daniel of Texas, a leading advocate and sponsor of the bill, said: I agree fully with the chairman that the striking of these words was not done in any manner to prejudice the rights of the States . . . . I just want to state that for the record, if this record is ever used in the future. [32] Senator Cordon, who had proposed the change, replied: I appreciate the statement of the Senator, and I concur in it, so far as the action taken here is concerned. [33] And Senator Anderson, another member of the Committee reporting the bill, agreed: I subscribe fully to what the chairman said quite awhile ago in pointing out that this bill does not seek to take away from or add to the position of these States as they came into the Union. [34] When the bill was reported out of committee and presented to the Senate, its supporters made clear that the Committee had made no change in its original objective of restoring to the States everything within their historic boundaries. Senator Holland said it was an obvious fact [35] that the bill was giving to the States that which, without question, was enjoyed by them for 150 or 160 years, namely, the ownership of everything within State boundaries, and reserving to the Federal Government everything beyond that. [36] Senator Cordon expressed his understanding that The boundaries of the States cannot be changed by Congress without the consent of the States. We cannot do anything legislatively in that field, and we have not sought to do so in this measure. I think that answers all and every one of the discussions with reference to boundary lines of the States, including whether they are measured from low water, high water, inland water, or some island. [37] And Senator Holland said: By way of a brief summary, the general purpose of this measure as reported by the Interior and Insular Affairs Committee is to recognize, confirm, establish, and vest in and assign to the respective States the title and ownership of the lands and resources beneath navigable waters within their respective boundaries . . . . [38] And Senator Daniel explained: Until recently the Federal Government never thought it owned these lands, and even until now it has never possessed or used them. The lands are still in the possession of the States . . . . The passage of the pending proposed legislation will simply permit the States to keep what they have always had since the foundation of the Union. [39] If that were not enough to show that the removal of the definition of inland waters from § 2 of the bill as a courtesy to the State and Justice Departments was to have no substantive effect, the Senate Committee said at the beginning of its report on its version of the bill: The committee wishes to emphasize that, as will be seen from comparison with the measure as introduced, the changes are primarily those of form and language, and the committee amendment is consistent throughout with the philosophy and intent of Senate Joint Resolution 13 as introduced. The only change of substance is found in section 9, in which the jurisdiction and control of the Federal Government over the natural resources of the seabed of the Continental Shelf seaward of historic State boundaries is confirmed. [40] Thus the continued intention to confer on the States all submerged lands within their historic boundaries was again reiterated. And in a specific reference to the elimination of the definition of inland waters from § 2, the Committee Report said that the words had been deleted because of the committee's belief that the question of what constitutes inland waters should be left where Congress finds it. The committee is convinced that the definition neither adds nor takes away anything a State may have now in the way of a coast and the lands underneath waters behind it. [41] The Committee had before it the report of the Special Master in this very case [42] and did not adopt his criteria, based on the California decision, for determining inland waters, criteria which included the Boggs formula for determining bays, a formula which many Senators indicated they disapproved and which the Committee Report specifically stated it did not mean to establish as the law. Clearly the position of the Committee was that it really cared only about restoring to the States their claims to submerged lands within their historic boundaries, which of course included all the lands, bays, harbors and channels within those boundariestheir historic coastlines and three miles or leagues of marginal sea. [43] The Committee saw no reason to attempt to spell out its definition of inland waters, as including all historic bays and channels, when there was no reason to do so and when to do so might possibly have embarrassing repercussions on American foreign relations, where different definitions of inland waters prevailed. Lest anyone misconstrue the change, the Committee said with reference to it: The elimination of the language, in the committee's opinion, is consistent with the philosophy of the Holland bill to place the States in the position in which both they and the Federal Government thought they were for more than a century and a half, and not to create any situations with respect thereto. [44] The Court reads this change in words as showing a legislative intent to leave the definition of inland waters to the courts without restriction. Ante, p. 154. The Court agrees that before this change was made, the bill gave the States all the submerged lands out to their historic boundaries. The Court admits that the 1947 California decision rejected the States' claims to their historic boundaries and, according to the Court, set up a test of international law and foreign-policy standards for measuring inland waters. But the Court concludes that when the Committee said that it was leaving the States with the rights to inland waters which they had before the California decision, it really meant to establish the international law standard, including the Boggs formula (except insofar as that formula has since been abandoned by treaty) which many Senators had so strenuously opposed and which in their Committee Report they specifically stated they did not mean to adopt. I think that a fair reading of the discussion of this change shows that the Committee members intended that all the States should have their boundaries, including a belt of marginal sea and all the lands and waters from which they had historically measured their claims to the marginal sea, which they thought would have been recognized as such by the courts up to the time of the California decision, and that the test of inland waters and coastlines was therefore an historical one. The Committee regarded the California decision as a complete aberration, and assumed that before it all courts would have judged inland waters by historical tests, as in fact several California and federal decisions show they had. [45] I cannot understand how the Court reasons that when the Committee said that it left the States as it thought they were before the California decision, it really meant to put them in the position the Court says they were in after that case, insofar as inland waters and their coastlines are concerned. I think that the amendment did just what the Committee said it did: it freed Congress from the need of having to determine matters that are highly technical, [46] and left it for the States to prove if they could the facts to support their historic claims that particular bodies were inland waters behind the coastline. Senator Kuchel of California, fully familiar with the problems of California, and on the alert to protect that State's interest in the bays and channels within its historic boundaries, interpreted the bill properly, I think, when he said: In recognizing State ownership of lands beneath navigable waters within historic State boundaries, this joint resolution wisely makes no attempt to define exactly what those boundaries are. In substance, the resolution provides that each of the States has ownership of all lands beneath navigable waters extending, in the case of littoral States, 3 geographical miles seaward from its coastline, or to its historic boundary.  [47] Thus up to this point in the legislative history I think it can be said that (1) the Holland bill as originally drafted unquestionably gave the States title to all submerged lands out as far as their historic boundaries; and (2) the elimination of the legislative definition of inland waters did not alter the original intent of the bill in the slightest degree, but rather left it up to the States to prove that particular bays, channels or harbors were inside their coastlines as part of their historic boundaries, according to the position in which both they and the Federal Government thought they were for more than a century and a half. [48]