Opinion ID: 1791343
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: where we are headed

Text: It is easy to paint a picture of wholesome delight and pleasure in the enjoyment by the public in floating, swimming, canoeing, fishing, motorboating on the flowing bodies of water in Mississippi, whether they be called streams, creeks or rivers. We can applaud the efforts by the State to make such recreational pursuits available to all our people. Such a laudable objective must never beguile us, however, into overlooking another attribute of our national character: the inalienable, sacred right of all to possess and enjoy our own property. Art. 3, § 14 of our Mississippi Constitution states: No person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property except by due process of law. Amendment V to the U.S. Constitution states in pertinent part: No person shall be ... deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; ... Amendment XIV to the U.S. Constitution states in pertinent part: ... nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; ... It is thus plain that the right to exclusively possess and use one's own property acquired honorably and lawfully is just as dear a constitutional right as life and liberty. All three are equally important under our Constitutions. Indeed, all three rights are intertwined, and it is impossible to conceive freedom of any of the three not encompassing the remaining two. We must never forget our own history, where we came from and what made this Nation. In fact, law can never be fully understood without a knowledge of our history. Two weeks after Appomattox in Raleigh, North Carolina, when General William Tecumseh Sherman, commander of the Army of the Tennessee, accepted the surrender of the tattered Confederates, he signed a document guaranteeing that upon the ex-Rebels taking an oath of allegiance they would have rights of person and property. Granting property rights to Rebels infuriated Secretary of War Stanton. Both these men understood what the right of property meant to Americans. The proposition in 16A C.J.S. Constitutional Law § 506 (1984), is stated as well as it can be stated: The right of private property is a fundamental, sacred, natural, inherent, and inalienable right, the protection of which is one of the most important purposes of government. It is a common-law right, which existed before the adoption of the federal and state constitutions, and is not now dependent on them for its existence... . The constitutional provisions for the protection of property should be liberally construed in favor of the right of property. Protection of the right to property is not dependent on the value or amount of property held. The right may not be submitted to vote, and depends on the outcome of no election. The right to enjoy property without unlawful deprivation is a personal right, regardless of the property in question. Precisely when one of these marginal waterways ceases to be private and becomes public is not as easy and simple as land. Indeed, as above noted, the dividing line may be elusive and difficult to determine. It is a fact, however, susceptible of proof in court, and the State's solemn obligation is not to emasculate settled definitions of property by a statute. It is likewise this Court's duty to enunciate the Constitutional limit beyond which the State may not lawfully go. We must likewise be completely honest, never denominating something public which has historically been considered and accepted as private simply because of popular demand. It is dangerous to whittle away, insiduously and piecemeal, any property rights; it is abominable to do so through intellectual dishonesty. [8] I am not unaware that Courts in some states have broadened the definition of navigability in fact to include a rowboat used for fishing or a canoe engaged in purely recreational pursuit. People v. Mack, 19 Cal. App.3d 1040, 97 Cal. Rptr. 448 (3d Dist. 1971); Attorney General v. Hallden, 51 Mich. App. 176, 214 N.W.2d 856 (1974); Nekoosa-Edwards Paper Co. v. Railroad Comm., 201 Wis. 40, 228 N.W. 144 (1929), reh'g denied 201 Wis. 40, 229 N.W. 631 (1930) and aff'd 283 U.S. 787, 51 S.Ct. 352, 75 L.Ed. 1415 (1931). This may very well have met popular demand, and have encouraged tourists, as the majority attempts to do with its decision. The bed-rock economic well-being of any state, however, is founded on a healthy respect for property rights. There can be no better inducement for investment in our State, by citizens and non-citizens as well, than the solemn asseveration that in this State property rights are indeed sacred. The right to vote, as of freedom of speech and religion, are not simply words written into constitutions. They are rights deeply embedded in the psyche of every American, which in turn find expression in the United States Constitution, and every state constitution in this land. Any court which tampered with any of these rights would be considered engaging in an act of folly if not madness. We should not forget that just as deeply embedded in the mind and heart of every American is the belief that he has a natural, God-given right to peaceably enjoy and possess his own property. No court should ever be insensitive to this right so precious to the heart of every American. The answer, then, to those who want to make public waterways out of streams and rivers which are only navigable by a rowboat or canoe, and which have never been considered navigable in fact, is simple. If there is a public need, declare it and pay the riparian landowners for it. It would require only a modest investment of public funds to acquire a boating and fishing easement on a small river or creek. If there is indeed a public need for such areas, it would be absurd to contend that a state which raises well in excess of $1 billion in annual tax revenue could not find sufficient funds to add these small areas to its public recreational facilities. This course would promote peace and harmony. It is the course followed by Colorado, where water is much scarcer than in Mississippi, and where tourism plays a much bigger role in the state economy than in our state. People v. Emmert, 198 Colo. 137, 597 P.2d 1025, 6 A.L.R.4th 1030 (1979); Colo. Rev. Stat. § 33-1-105(1)(g) (1984). We should never forget the counsel of Justice Holmes in Pennsylvania Coal Co. v. Mahon, 260 U.S. 393, 416, 43 S.Ct. 158, 160, 67 L.Ed. 322, 326 (1922): We are in danger of forgetting that a strong public desire to improve the public condition is not enough to warrant achieving the desire by a shorter cut than the constitutional way of paying for the change. ROY NOBLE LEE, C.J., DAN M. LEE, P.J., and BLASS, J., join this opinion.