Opinion ID: 1177637
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: California's Territorial Waters

Text: Defendants assert that because the precise location of the Comanche when she was boarded was beyond California's boundaries their convictions must fall. In resolving this issue we are aided by general principles and an examination of a series of federal and state constitutional and legislative enactments as well as United States Supreme Court interpretations thereof. (1) As a general proposition the sea boundaries of a coastal nation or state are traditionally fixed with reference to its inland waters and marginal sea. The outer sea boundary is deemed to be a line which runs parallel to and seaward from the coast, and the zone of water between the land mass and that line is referred to as the marginal sea. The landward edge of this marginal sea need not be the precise water's edge at low tide. Where the shoreline is characterized by irregular bays, inlets, and harbors and random nearby islands the waters within these irregular configurations are considered inland waters of the nation or state, subject to its sovereignty, dominion and control. (See Gross, The Maritime Boundaries of the States (1966) 64 Mich.L.Rev. 639, 640.) (2) In seeking to define California's seaward boundary, our first source of authority is federal. The United States Congress, alone, through its power to admit new states, may set state boundaries as a domestic matter. Such a boundary [is] fully effective as between Nation and State ..., regardless of contrary state claims or expectations. ( United States v. Louisiana (1960) 363 U.S. 1, 35 [4 L.Ed.2d 1025, 1049, 80 S.Ct. 961]; see United States v. California (1965) 381 U.S. 139, 157 [14 L.Ed.2d 296, 308, 85 S.Ct. 1401] ( California II. ) Accordingly, when the extent of a state's territorial jurisdiction is relevant to the operation of federal law, the congressional delineation of state boundaries prevails over conflicting state assertions. The people of California have purported to describe their own boundaries both constitutionally and legislatively. Both the 1849 and 1879 Constitutions in article XXI, section 1, described the California sea boundary as extending three English [i.e., nautical] miles into the Pacific Ocean, running in a northwesterly direction and following the direction of the Pacific Coast.... Also, including all the islands, harbors, and bays along and adjacent to the coast. (Italics added; see present art. III, § 2.) To implement the foregoing constitutional provision the Legislature in 1949 enacted Government Code section 170 which recites: To give greater precision to the [constitutional description], it is hereby declared that the [sea] ... boundary... runs and has in the past run three English nautical miles oceanward of lines drawn along the outer sides of the outermost of the islands, reefs, and rocks along and adjacent to the mainland and across intervening waters; ... (Italics added.) Section 171, in turn, provides that all water between the mainland and the island-encircling lines described in section 170 are declared to be and to have been in the past inland waters of the State. (Italics added.) The current article III, section 2, of the Constitution, which was adopted in 1972 to replace the 1849-1879 description, declares that the state's boundaries are those stated in the Constitution of 1849 as modified pursuant to statute. (Italics added.) All parties concede that the Santa Barbara Channel, including the position at which the Comanche was boarded, is inland waters under the current state constitutional and statutory language. Must these state declarations yield to the preeminence of federal legislative and judicial expression? In 1947, the United States Supreme Court held that the United States, rather than the coastal states, possessed all ownership rights in offshore lands and resources. ( United States v. California (1947) 332 U.S. 19 [91 L.Ed. 1889, 67 S.Ct. 1658] ( California I ).) In 1953 Congress responded to California I by adopting the Submerged Lands Act (the Act). (43 U.S.C.A. § 1301 et seq.) The Act transferred to the affected individual states title to and management of all lands and resources in or under the navigable waters within their respective boundaries. ( Id., § 1311(b)(1).) Furthermore, the boundaries of coastal states were therein defined as those which existed at the time of the state's admission into the Union or which were thereafter approved by Congress or established by the Act itself. In conformity with the then traditional federal view of international sea limits, the 1953 law approved and confirmed the boundaries of each coastal state as terminating three geographical (nautical) miles seaward from the coast. State claims beyond the three-mile limit were foreclosed except for the assertions by certain southern states that their previously ratified boundaries extended nine miles into the Gulf of Mexico. ( Id., §§ 1301(b), 1312.) The three- or nine-mile zone described in the Act is measured from the nation's coast line, ( ibid. ) which is defined as the line of ordinary low water mark where the coast is in direct contact with the open sea, otherwise, as the line marking the seaward limit of inland waters. ( Id., § 1301(c).) Accordingly, a state's inland waters lie entirely within its boundaries. In 1965, in California II, supra, 381 U.S. 139, the high court again spoke definitively and specifically on the subject before us, rejecting broad-based arguments that the Santa Barbara Channel constituted inland waters of California under the Act. In holding that the statute left the definition of inland waters to the courts, free of any subjective state expectations ( id., at pp. 150-152 [14 L.Ed.2d at pp. 304-306]), the California II majority adopted, for convenience, the definition then used internationally by the executive branch of the federal government under the Convention on the Territorial Sea and the Contiguous Zone (15 U.S.T. 1606 (1964)), to which the nation is a signatory. The Convention formula, as applied by the national executive branch in foreign relations, restricts inland waters to certain geographical harbors and bays encircled by a single land mass. ( Id., at pp. 169-170 [14 L.Ed.2d at p. 315]; see Convention, art. VII.) The California II opinion also specifically disposed of contentions that the 1849 California Constitution established a historic boundary outside the coastal islands ratified by Congress in the Act of Admission (9 Stat. 452 (1850)) and again in the 1953 law. (381 U.S. at pp. 172-175 [14 L.Ed.2d at pp. 316-318].) Under the clear holding of California II, the state's territorial claims in Santa Barbara Channel are confined to three-mile belts seaward from the mainland and around the perimeter of each of the islands in the channel. (The Comanche was not within any of these belts when it was boarded.) Furthermore, the foregoing result is unaffected by the adoption of the Fishery Conservation and Management Act of 1976 (FCMA) (Pub. L. No. 94-265; 16 U.S.C.A. § 1801 et seq.), in which Congress asserted exclusive United States fishing management jurisdiction over a sea zone beyond state boundaries and extending 200 miles seaward from our nation's coastline. ( Id., §§ 1811, 1812.) The several states retain jurisdiction over fishing within their boundaries, but may not directly or indirectly regulate fishing outside those boundaries, except in certain circumstances. ( Id., § 1856(a).) Under the FCMA, the precise location of state boundaries for purposes of that law is of central importance as between Nation and State. (3) We are unable to accept the People's argument that the effect of California II is limited solely to issues involving land title which are governed by the Act and that the high court's holding, accordingly, is therefore inapplicable to California's political and penal jurisdiction over adjacent seas. Fairly read, California II established the state's boundaries for all purposes, political and proprietary, as between Nation and State. Accordingly, these boundaries are those boundaries referred to in the FCMA as the limits of state territorial jurisdiction over fishing, and our reasons for so concluding are several. First, the legislative history of the Act indicates a congressional assumption that it was transferring title to undersea resources within the states' political boundaries. This history is carefully traced by the high tribunal in United States v. Louisiana, supra, 363 U.S. 1. Under long standing case law, the states assumed before 1947 that they owned the natural resources within their territorial waters. (E.g., The Abby Dodge (1912) 223 U.S. 166, 173-175 [56 L.Ed. 390, 392-393, 32 S.Ct. 310]; Manchester v. Massachusetts (1891) 139 U.S. 240, 264 [35 L.Ed. 159, 166-167, 11 S.Ct. 559]; Pollard's Lessee v. Hagan et al. (1845) 44 U.S. (3 How.) 212, 228-229 [11 L.Ed. 565, 573].) California I severely undercut these expectations in holding that ownership of marginal sea resources was an attribute of federal, not state, sovereignty, regardless of the states' seaward boundaries for political purposes. (332 U.S. 19, 35-36 [91 L.Ed. 1889, 1897-1898]; see Louisiana, supra, 363 U.S. 1, 17 [4 L.Ed.2d 1025, 1038].) The holding was somewhat tempered a year later, however, when the Supreme Court confirmed that the states retained jurisdiction to exercise their police power in the three-mile belt of territorial waters. ( Toomer v. Witsell (1948) 334 U.S. 385, 393 [92 L.Ed. 1460, 1469-1470, 68 S.Ct. 1157].) California I triggered immediate congressional attempts to restore to the states ownership rights in the marginal sea. Virtually all of the quitclaim bills introduced after California I framed the grant of title with reference to state boundaries. This framework was employed because the sponsors understood this Court to have established, prior to the California decision, a rule of state ownership itself defined in terms of state territorial boundaries. ... ( Louisiana, supra, 363 U.S. at pp. 19-20 [4 L.Ed.2d at p. 1040], italics added.) The need for specific boundary terminology was the subject of spirited congressional debate prior to adoption of the Act. Because many states had no expressly defined sea boundaries, either by direct congressional action, or under state Constitutions ratified by Congress at the time of admission, it was therefore urged that submerged proprietary rights should not depend on proof of state boundaries, and that a quitclaim statute should not refer to them. The executive branch, on the other hand, stressed the effect of the California I holding that political boundaries, even if they included the marginal sea, did not carry land or resource ownership rights. ( Id., at pp. 22-24 [91 L.Ed. at pp. 1890-1891].) These differing views were resolved by a two-step approach. The Act first definitely established the states' minimum seaward boundaries, without prejudice to subsequent and greater state claims based on prior congressional ratification or approval. (43 U.S.C.A. §§ 1301(b), 1312.) It then tied the statutory grant of title to the boundaries thus established. ( Id., § 1311; Louisiana, supra, 363 U.S. at pp. 21-24 [4 L.Ed.2d at pp. 1040-1042].) Implicit in this approach was the principle that each state had a single, fixed seaward boundary for all domestic purposes, political and proprietary. (See Gross, supra, 64 Mich.L.Rev. 639, 642, 665, 670; but see Alexander, The Law of the Sea (1967) p. 238.) The People's narrow reading of California II must be rejected for a second reason. The California II court, within a context which is broader than the Act, rejected the precise argument of the People before us. As here, the state claimed in California II that its original Constitution, ratified by Congress in the Act of Admission, had established an historic boundary beyond the coastal islands. The high court, however, found that the state constitutional language was ambiguous, and that California's interpretation was actually contradicted by the statutory boundary descriptions for certain of the state's coastal counties. (381 U.S. at p. 174 [14 L.Ed.2d at pp. 317-318].) Under these circumstances, in the high court's view the Legislature's unilateral effort, after the event as it were, to clarify the early constitutional description by statute could add no force to the People's claim. Finally, the relationship of the term boundaries in the Act and in FCMA becomes clear when the two enactments are read together. The 1953 law granted the states, within their boundaries, not only title to lands beneath sea waters, but the right and power to manage, administer, lease, develop, and use the resources  within such lands and waters where not in conflict with federal regulation. (43 U.S.C.A. §§ 1311(a)(2), 1314(a).) Specifically, for our purposes, the high court has subsequently interpreted the quoted language as giving the states a concurrent right, using their police power, to control the taking of free-swimming fish within their territories. ( Douglas v. Seacoast Products, Inc. (1977) 431 U.S. 265, 283-285 [52 L.Ed.2d 304, 318-320, 97 S.Ct. 1740].) The FCMA, on the other hand, asserts almost exclusive federal control over offshore fisheries insofar as compatible with the states' rights. By providing that it shall not be construed as extending or diminishing a state's authority within its boundaries, the FCMA leaves, unimpaired, the states with such fishery rights which they either acquired under the Act, or otherwise possessed. FCMA makes clear, however, that, for most purposes, such rights do not extend beyond those boundaries. (16 U.S.C.A. § 1856(a).) We think it clear that the congressional intent was that the term boundaries, as used in the 1953 Act and in the 1976 FCMA, should bear the same meaning and receive similar interpretation. Our conclusion that California II necessarily defined the state's inland waters for all national purposes conforms with prior federal decisions, which have consistently held or assumed that, for purposes of federal law, California's territorial claims in the coastal channels and straits are limited to three-mile belts off the mainland shore and surrounding the coastal islands. ( Wilmington Transp. Co. v. Cal. R.R. Comm. (1915) 236 U.S. 151, 152 [59 L.Ed. 508, 509, 35 S.Ct. 276] [Santa Catalina Channel is the high seas for purposes of federal economic regulation]; Hooker v. Raytheon Company (S.D.Cal. 1962) 212 F. Supp. 687, 693-694 [Santa Barbara Channel is the high seas under federal Death on the High Seas Act, despite the provisions of Gov. Code, §§ 170-171].) Such consistent interpretation of California II also reduces confusion in a complex area by establishing a uniform, precise boundary for all domestic federal purposes. (Cf., California II, 381 U.S. at p. 165 [14 L.Ed.2d at pp. 312-313]; Gross, supra, 64 Mich.L. Rev. 639, 670.) The People argue that we have previously extended California's inland waters for purposes of criminal jurisdiction beyond those set by California II. People v. Stralla (1939) 14 Cal.2d 617 [96 P.2d 941], is cited for the proposition, contrary to California II, that Santa Monica Bay is entirely within California territory for purposes of enforcement of the state's gambling laws. (Pp. 632-633; compare California II, 381 U.S. at pp. 173-175 [14 L.Ed.2d at pp. 317-318].) In Stralla, however, no conflict between state and federal or international law was presented. Indeed, the United States there appeared as amicus curiae in support of California's efforts to end offshore gambling. (14 Cal.2d at p. 619.) Here, consistent with the high court's conclusion in California II, we determine only that Santa Barbara Channel is outside California's boundaries for purposes of federal law, and that California's boundaries are those which are established under the Act as interpreted in California II. The channel is thereby excluded from California's boundaries. It follows that when defendants committed the acts for which they were convicted, they were not within California's inland waters. To the limited extent with which it conflicts with these conclusions we disapprove People v. Foretich (1970) 14 Cal. App.3d Supp. 6 [92 Cal. Rptr. 481].