Court Opinion

ID: 9418712
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:37:04.755449+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:08.712432
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice McReynolds,
dissenting.
Twenty years ago (1910), in Maryland v. West Virginia, 217 U. S. 577, it was definitely ruled by this Court (and rightly so) that under the compact of 1785 between Virginia and Maryland the uniform southern boundary of the latter State was low water mark on the right bank of the Potomac. Proper solution of the present controversy depends upon the precise question there decided. Fair consistency and proper regard for titles along the *352ten-mile river front in the District of Columbia, I think, demand that we follow what was thus solemnly declared.
Marine Ry. Co. v. United States (1921), 257 U. S. 47, was a proceeding begun by them to recover land on the Potomac River front at Alexandria originally below low water mark. Notwithstanding the essential point there was distinct from the one upon which Maryland v. West Virginia turned, the opinion carefully affirmed that “ the former decisions of the Court must be followed so far as they go ”—a truism, I submit, still worthy of acceptation. And the further observation that “ the compact between Virginia and Maryland in 1785 also seems to us to have no bearing upon the case” is plainly correct, whether relevant or not.
As Marine Ry. Co. v. United States related only to land below low water mark the compact of 1785 of course was inapplicable to the controversy. That compact did not undertake to settle titles to lands so located. No more did it apply to lands in Baltimore City.
In such circumstances the suggestion that the writer of the opinion in Maryland v. West Virginia by assenting to Marine Ry. Co. v. United States gave his approval to a doctrine directly opposed to the one he had definitely expressed for the Court seems to me without substance. The Court, through him, had ruled that the Maryland boundary extended to low water mark on the south side. Why should he object to an opinion which after expressly accepting former decisions held that land lying in the river north of that line had been part of Maryland?
The challenged decree should be affirmed.