Morris v. United States
Morris v. United States | |
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Case history | |
Prior | On appeal from the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia |
Court membership | |
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Case opinions | |
Majority | Shiras, joined by Fuller, Harlan, Brewer, Brown |
Dissent | White, joined by Peckham |
Gray and McKenna took no part in the consideration or decision of the case. |
Morris v. United States, 174 U.S. 196 (1899), is a 5-to-2 ruling by the
Background
On June 20, 1632,
In 1788, the
Shortly after the creation of the District of Columbia, the United States government sold certain plots of land to James M. Marshall; his brother, John Marshall (later Chief Justice of the United States); John L. Kidwell; the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal Company; and several others.[12]
Maryland and Virginia agreed to arbitrate their dispute, and in 1877 the Black-Jenkins Award (as the decision of the arbitration panel is known) placed Virginia's boundary with Maryland at the low-water mark on the Virginia side of the Potomac River.[7]
In 1882, Congress passed legislation providing for the dredging of the Potomac River, and for the dredged material to be used to fill in various tidal basins, marshes, and shores.
The heirs and other claimants sued to win title to the lands.
Decision
Majority opinion
Justice Shiras first laid out the facts of the case in a lengthy syllabus, and established various classes of claimants.[13] The first issue Justice Shiras confronted was whether any of the parties could lay claim to the bed of the Potomac River (and thus the reclaimed lands built by the government).[14] Shiras held that none of the heirs on the Virginia side of the river could make any claim to the riverbed. Neither Lord Colepeper, his heir Thomas Fairfax, 6th Lord Fairfax of Cameron, nor any of Fairfax's heirs had ever seriously asserted title to the riverbed, and the Black-Jenkins Award clearly re-established that the boundary of Virginia ended at the low-water mark and did not extend to the riverbed.[15] Relying on the Supreme Court's previous decision in Martin v. Waddell, 41 U.S. 367 (1842), Justice Shiras argued that none of the Maryland landholders could claim title to the riverbed, either. The majority held the original landholders were to hold the river and its bed in trust for the public, and that after the American Revolution these public trusts passed into the possession of the state (in this case, Maryland and in due time the District of Columbia).[16] Shiras distinguished Fairfax's Devisee v. Hunter's Lessee, 11 U.S. 603 (1813) by noting that Fairfax's Devisee did not involve Maryland or any Marylander claimant.[17] Even if the riverbed had been assigned to Lord Fairfax and his heirs, Shiras concluded, the logic of Martin v. Waddell still held and delivered the lands into the control of the federal government.[18]
The majority dismissed the Kidwell heirs' claim to the newly created land under the same reasoning applied to the Marshall heirs. However, Kidwell's heirs noted that Congress had conveyed the property to Kidwell under a resolution adopted on February 16, 1839. The majority held, however, that Congress did not intend by that resolution to convey the riverbed.
As for the canal company's claims, the majority held that since none of the private landowners held riparian rights, the company could not obtain such rights from the private landowners.[24] Nor was there any evidence that Congress was relinquishing its rights to Water Street or the river.[25] The court dismissed the claims of the last landowners, whose property lay between Water Street and the shore, as being improperly based on unofficial land records[26] and for being based on maps and other documents which did not accurately reflect the physical land.[27]
The judgment was affirmed.
Dissent
Justice
Justice White concluded that nothing in the record showed that the United States intended to withdraw the riparian water rights of the landholders when it built Water Street and cut the landholders off from the Potomac River.[28] White also engaged in a lengthy discussion of the laying out of the city's boundaries, and the conveyance of private property to the federal government.[29] There could be no doubt, White argued, that the private landowners intended to give all of their riparian rights to the federal government, and there could be no doubt that the federal government intended to give all riparian rights to those to whom it sold the land.[30] The majority's argument led to a tautology in which no riparian rights existed.[31]
Justice White also examined the conveyance of the federal government's land to the new private landowners in depth as well.[32] In his discussion, White interpreted the "incorrect" maps as indicating the riparian rights to which the new private landowners were entitled (rather than a problem of inaccurate mapping). White concluded several times that the federal government fully intended to convey riparian rights to the new landowners because the government and its agents repeatedly indicated in letters, memoranda, contracts of sale, and other documents and statements its expectation that the waterside landowners were to build and maintain docks, wharves, and quays and improve the riparian rights they enjoyed. To assume otherwise, White concluded, was nonsensical. Either the federal government intended to convey riparian rights, or the government deceptively contemplated building Water Street and cutting the new landowners off from their access. "...the first hypothesis is the one naturally to be assumed."[33] "The contracts for the sale of water lots with riparian rights attached, the reports of the surveyors, and the action of the commissioners, all blend into a harmonious and perfect whole, working from an original conception to a successful consummation of a well-understood result. The contrary view produces discord and disarrangement..."[34]
White also discussed the District of Columbia's lengthy history regarding the regulation of wharves and docks.[35] In his view, the city's treatment of the wharves demonstrated that the wharves were private property on private riverbed land, not private property licensed to be emplaced on a riverbed held in the public trust.[36] White interpreted Potomac Steam-Boat Co. as superimposing an easement on top of existing riparian water rights.[37] It was not, as the majority held, the government's purpose all along to bound the plots of land with Water Street.
Justice White would have overturned the judgment of the lesser court for determination of the riparian rights of the landowners in question.
Assessment
In Morris v. United States, the Supreme Court dealt with what was known as a "top common," a tract of land between a river and the land intended to be occupied and sold to private landowners.[38] Such practices were common in colonial America.[38] Morris v. United States is considered an important case in the evolution of the law of rivers, streams, lakes, and other bodies of water, for it established that such bodies of water and their beds belonged to the public in common and were held in trust by the state for its citizens.[39][40] The Supreme Court further developed this public trust doctrine in Illinois Central Railroad v. Illinois in 1892 and more recently in Utah Division of State Lands v. United States, 482 U.S. 193, 203 (1987).[40]
See also
Further reading
- Gilmore, Mathew B. (September 20, 2016). "Kidwell's gambit: One man's gamble and the creation of Potomac Park". TheInTowner. Washington, D.C.: InTowner Publishing Corp. Archived from the original on December 19, 2018. Retrieved December 19, 2018.
References
- ^ Brugger, Robert J. Maryland, a Middle Temperament, 1634-1980. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996, p. 4-5.
- ^ Scott, James Brown. Judicial Settlement of Controversies Between States of the American Union. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1919, p. 473; Risjord, Norman K. Jefferson's America, 1760-1815. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002, p. 217.
- ^ Harrison, Fairfax. Virginia Land Grants: A Study of Conveyancing in Relation to Colonial Politics. Westminster, Md.: Willow Bend Books, 1998, p. 75.
- ^ Whyte, W. Pinkney and Jones, Isaac D. Boundary Line Between the States of Maryland and Virginia. Before the Honorable Jeremiah S. Black, Honorable William A. Graham, and Honorable Charles J. Jenkins, Arbitrators Upon the Boundary Line Between the States of Virginia and Maryland. Baltimore, Md.: 1874, p. 75.
- ^ Cutright, W.B.; Maxwell, Hu; Sayre, R.H.; and Brooks, Earle Amos. The History of Upshur County, West Virginia: From Its Earliest Exploration and Settlement to the Present Time. Baltimore, Md.: Genealogical Pub. Co., 1996, p. 59.
- ^ Scott, James Brown. Judicial Settlement of Controversies Between States of the American Union. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1919, p. 484.
- ^ a b Zimmerman, Joseph F. Interstate Disputes: The Supreme Court's Original Jurisdiction. Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York, 2006, p. 131-132.
- United States Constitution. See: Dellapenna, Joseph W. "Transboundary Water Allocation in the Twenty-First Century: Colloquiam Article: Interstate Struggles Over Rivers: The Southeastern States and the Struggle Over 'Hooch." New York University Environmental Law Journal. 12:828 (2005), p. 867, n.216.
- ^ Furer, Howard B. Washington, A Chronological and Documentary History, 1790-1970. Dobbs Ferry, N.Y.: Oceana Publications, 1975, p. 62.
- ^ diGiacomantonio, William C. "'To Make Hay While the Sun Shines': D.C. Governance As An Episode in the Revolution of 1800." In Establishing Congress: The Removal to Washington, D.C., and the Election of 1800. Kenneth R. Bowling and Donald R. Kennon, eds. Columbus, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 2005, p. 39-56.
- ^ Tindall, William. Origin and Government of the District of Columbia. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1908, p. 102-108.
- ^ a b c Gutheim, Frederick A. and Lee, Antoinette J. Worthy of the Nation: Washington, D.C., From L'Enfant to the National Capital Planning Commission. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006, p. 95-96.
- ^ Morris v. United States, 174 U.S. 196, 198-223.
- ^ Morris v. United States, 174 U.S. 196, 222-223.
- ^ Morris v. United States, 174 U.S. 196, 226.
- ^ Morris v. United States, 174 U.S. 196, 227-228.
- ^ Morris v. United States, 174 U.S. 196, 230.
- ^ Morris v. United States, 174 U.S. 196, 231.
- ^ Morris v. United States, 174 U.S. 196, 234.
- ^ Morris v. United States, 174 U.S. 196, 236-238.
- ^ Morris v. United States, 174 U.S. 196, 242.
- ^ Morris v. United States, 174 U.S. 196, 246-266.
- ^ Morris v. United States, 174 U.S. 196, 266-269.
- ^ Morris v. United States, 174 U.S. 196, 271-272.
- ^ Morris v. United States, 174 U.S. 196, 273.
- ^ Morris v. United States, 174 U.S. 196, 276.
- ^ Morris v. United States, 174 U.S. 196, 277-288.
- ^ Morris v. United States, 174 U.S. 196, 292-293.
- ^ Morris v. United States, 174 U.S. 196, 295-300.
- ^ Morris v. United States, 174 U.S. 196, 300-301.
- ^ Morris v. United States, 174 U.S. 196, 307.
- ^ Morris v. United States, 174 U.S. 196, 311-343.
- ^ Morris v. United States, 174 U.S. 196, 343.
- ^ Morris v. United States, 174 U.S. 196, 311-347.
- ^ Morris v. United States, 174 U.S. 196, 348-357.
- ^ Morris v. United States, 174 U.S. 196, 357.
- ^ Morris v. United States, 174 U.S. 196, 358.
- ^ a b Martin, Thomas C. "Haunted By History: Colonial Land Trusts Post National Threat." William & Mary Law Review. 48:303 (October 2006), p. 311, n.54.
- ^ Schultz, Jr., Warren M. "Property—Classifying Bodies of Water as Lakes or Streams." Tulane Law Review. 49:208 (November 1974), p. 213.
- ^ a b Wilkinson, Charles F. "Symposium on the Public Trust and the Waters of the American West: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow: Introduction and Overview: The Headwaters of the Public Trust: Some Thoughts on the Source and Scope of the Traditional Doctrine." Environmental Law. 19:425 (Spring 1989), p. 455, n.122.
External links
- Text of Morris v. United States, 174 U.S. 196 (1899) is available from: CourtListener Findlaw Google Scholar Justia Library of Congress