Morris v. United States

Morris v. United States, 174 U.S. 196 (1899), is a 5-to-2 ruling by the United States Supreme Court which held that the bed under the Potomac River between the District of Columbia and the Commonwealth of Virginia belonged to the United States government rather than nearby private landowners on the District of Columbia side.

Contents

• 1 Background

• 2 Decision

  • 2.1 Majority opinion

  • 2.2 Dissent

• 3 Assessment

• 4 See also

• 5 Further reading

• 6 References

• 7 External links

Background

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On June 20, 1632, Charles I , King of England , made a land grant in North America to Cecil Calvert, 2nd Baron Baltimore which became the Province of Maryland (later the state of Maryland ). This grant set the boundary of Maryland at the low-water mark of the southern bank of the Potomac River. On September 27, 1688, King James II made a land grant in North American to Thomas Colepeper, 2nd Baron Colepeper which became the Colony of Virginia (later the state of Virginia). This grant designated "the Potomac River" as the boundary of Virginia. The conflicting grants led to a long-running border dispute between Maryland and Virginia. The two states settled navigational and riparian water rights in the Maryland–Virginia Compact of 1785 , but the boundary dispute continued.

In 1788, the United States Constitution was ratified. The Constitution established an independent zone known as the District of Columbia for the seat of the new government. The Residence Act of 1790 provided for the new capital to be located on the Potomac River, and President George Washington was authorized by the United States Congress to determine the exact location (which he did a year later). The District of Columbia Organic Act of 1801 formally established Congressional jurisdiction over the new District. The Virginia retrocession of 1846-1847 returned that portion of the District of Columbia on the Virginia site of the Potomac River to the state of Virginia. This left in doubt the exact position of the District's border with Virginia (just as Maryland's southern border remained in doubt).

Chief Justice John Marshall, whose heirs were party to the suit

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.

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.

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. This created extensive new land along the northern shore of the Potomac River—land which adjoined that of the heirs of James Marshall, John Marshall, and John Kidwell, and the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal Company. Congress passed legislation in August 1886 directing the Attorney General of the United States to protect the interests of the United States to the new land, and giving the courts jurisdiction over these claims.

The heirs and other claimants sued to win title to the lands.

Decision

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Majority opinion

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Associate Justice George Shiras Jr. wrote the majority opinion for the Court, joined by Chief Justice Melville Fuller and Justices John Marshall Harlan , David Josiah Brewer , and Henry Billings Brown .

Justice Shiras first laid out the facts of the case in a lengthy syllabus, and established various classes of claimants. 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). 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. 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). 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. 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.

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. The majority relied heavily on the disc

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