Court Opinion

ID: 9425485
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:14:51.989844+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:55.885196
License: Public Domain

Me. Justice Stewaet,
dissenting.
The Court in this case holds that federal common law governs the resolution of conflicting claims to the exposed bed of a navigable river between Arizona as the owner of the riverbed and a riparian landowner.1 I *333think this ruling emasculates the equal-footing doctrine, under which this Court has long held “that the new States since admitted have the same rights, sovereignty and jurisdiction ... as the original States possess within their respective borders.” Mumford v. Wardwell, 6 Wall. 423, 436 (1867).
After the Revolution, the 13 Original States succeeded both to the Crown’s title to the beds underlying navigable rivers and to its sovereignty over that property. Ibid. “[T]he shores of navigable waters and the soils under the same in the original States were not granted by the Constitution to the United States, but were reserved to the several States.” Ibid. If the equal-footing doctrine means what it says, then the States that were later admitted to the Union must hold the same title and must exercise the same sovereignty. Weber v. Board of Harbor Comm’rs, 18 Wall. 57, 65-66 (1873); Shively v. Bowlby, 152 U. S. 1, 16 (1894); Pollard’s Lessee v. Hagan, 3 How. 212, 223 (1845). Just as with other real property within a State’s boundaries, an element of sovereignty over the property constituting the riverbed is the power of the State’s courts to determine and apply state property rules in the resolution of conflicting claims to that property. Today, however, the Court holds that federal common law supersedes the common-law property rules applied by Arizona pursuant to its sovereign authority over the property in question.
This Court has repeatedly recognized a State’s power, as a function of its sovereignty over the lands within its borders, to apply state common-law property rules *334such as those applied by the Supreme Court of Arizona in this case:
“Th[e] right of the States to regulate and control the shores of tide waters, and the land under them, is the same as that which is exercised by the Crown in England. In this country the same rule has been extended to our great navigable lakes . . . ; and also ... to navigable rivers . . . ; but it depends on the law of each State to what waters and to what extent this prerogative of the State over the lands under water shall be exercised.” Hardin v. Jordan, 140 U. S. 371, 382 (1891).
With respect to an avulsion exposing large portions of riverbed and leading to conflicting claims to the ownership of the exposed land, virtually the twin of this case, the Court has said:
“How the land that emerges . . . shall be disposed of as between public and private ownership is a matter to be determined according to the law of each State, under the familiar doctrine that it is for the States to establish for themselves such rules of property as they deem expedient with respect to the navigable waters within their borders and the riparian lands adjacent to them. . . . Thus, [the State] may limit riparian ownership by the ordinary high-water mark ... [or] may, in the case of an avulsion followed by a drying up of the old channel of the river, recognize the right of former riparian owners to be restored to that which they have lost through gradual erosions in times preceding the avulsion . . . .” Arkansas v. Tennessee, 246 U. S. 158, 175-176 (1918).
*335Along the same vein, the Court has said:
“It is generally conceded that the riparian title attaches to subsequent accretions to the land effected by the gradual and imperceptible operation of natural causes. But whether it attaches to land reclaimed by artificial means from the bed of the river, or to sudden accretions produced by unusual floods, is a question which each State decides for itself. . . . The confusion of navigable with tide water, found in the monuments of the common law, long prevailed in this country .... [I]t laid the foundation in many States of doctrines with regard to the ownership of the soil in navigable waters above tide-water at variance with sound principles of public policy. Whether, as rules of property, it would now be safe to change these doctrines where they have been applied ... is for the several States themselves to determine. . . . [The decision] properly belongs to the States by their inherent sovereignty . . . Barney v. Keokuk, 94 U. S. 324, 337-338 (1877).
To put the matter bluntly, the Court’s application of the equal-footing doctrine in this, case seems to me wholly wrong. While conceding that the later admitted States have “ ‘the same rights, sovereignty and jurisdiction ... as the original States possess within their respective borders/ ” ante, at 318, the Court holds that “the nature and extent of the title to the bed of a navigable stream held by the State under the equal-footing doctrine” involves a “ ‘right asserted under federal law’ ” that must be determined under the rules of federal common law. The effect of the Court’s analysis is completely to undercut the equal-footing doctrine. As noted above, the original States derived their sovereign rights *336and powers directly from the Crown after the Revolution and retained whatever powers they did not later surrender or limit in the Federal Constitution. Even under the Court’s “title” analysis, therefore, federal common law would not govern the conflicting claims involved here if the river were located in Massachusetts or Virginia, rather than in Arizona.
The upshot of the Court’s decision is that the 13 Original States are free to develop and apply their own rules of property law for the resolution of conflicting claims to an exposed bed of a river, while those States admitted after the Constitution’s ratification must under today’s decision knuckle under to this Court’s supervisory view of “federal common law.” A later-admitted State like Arizona is thus not at all on an equal footing with the original States in the exercise of sovereignty over real property within its boundaries. And the vehicle used by the Court to arrive at this unjust result is, incredibly, the very doctrine that was intended to insure to the new States equal footing with the original States. Thus, the Court’s strange application of the equal-footing doctrine brings that constitutional principle into fundamental conflict with the purpose it was intended to serve.
If the equal-footing doctrine means anything, it means that Arizona cannot be treated as a second-class State. It means that, upon admission to the Union, it received title to, and sovereignty over, the beds of navigable rivers within its boundaries, to the same extent as the original States after the Revolution. As a function of that sovereignty, Arizona courts have the power to develop and apply state common law in determining legal questions that arise with respect to this property, including conflicting claims to the bed that is later exposed by the vagaries of the river. And *337the- power of the Arizona courts to decide this controversy under state law surely includes the power to decide it in a way that we here might think is wholly wrong.2

 The Court emphasizes the fact that it is the State that holds the title to the riverbed property. The nature of the title held by the State, however, is such that it could be conveyed to a private owner. (“[T]he settled law of this country [is] that the ownership of and dominion and sovereignty over lands covered by tide waters, or navigable [rivers], within the limits of the several States, belong to the respective States within which they are found, with the consequent right to use or dispose of any portion thereof . . . Shively v. Bowlby, 152 U. S. 1, 47 (1894); Illinois Central R. Co. v. Illinois, 146 U. S. 387, 435 (1892); United States v. Holt Bank, 270 U. S. 49, 54-55 (1926).) Since the State could hardly convey more title than it held, it would appear from the Court’s opinion *333that federal law would also govern the resolution of conflicting claims to the exposed riverbed as between a private owner of the bed and a private riparian owner.

 The Court implies, but does not hold, that the decision of the Arizona Supreme Court might constitute a taking of the petitioner cattle company’s property without compensation, in violation of due process of law. My conviction that this infirmity was present in the decision of the Washington Supreme Court was the reason for my special concurrence in Hughes v. Washington, 389 U. S. 290, 294-298 (1967). Hughes was a case in which a state court effected a retroactive change in state property law that resulted in an unconstitutional taking of property without compensation. That, however, is not the situation here. The Arizona Supreme Court simply applied its established property rules with regard to the effects of avulsion, accretion, erosion, and reliction in resolving conflicting claims to the exposed riverbed. It declined the petitioners’ invitation to adopt the “enlightened” re-emergence doctrine as part of the law of Arizona. This case, therefore, does not involve a retroactive alteration of state law such as would constitute an unconstitutional taking of private property.