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Show -80- power of the American States 167 During the same year (1921) the United States Supreme Court, in its de- cision of a suit between these States involving pollution of the same waters, took occasion to say . - t?We cannot withhold the suggestion, inspired by the consideration of this case, that the grave problem of sewage disposal presented by the large and growing populations living on the shores of New York Bay is one more likely to be wisely solved by cooperative study and by conference and mutual concession on the part of representatives of the States so vitally interested in it than by proceedings in any court however constituted, l68 But neither the Court nor Congress has suggested any formula which the States might adopt for reconciling the differences likely to develop in the making of compacts to adjust their sovereign relations in the control and use of interstate waters. Nor has any rule or system been devised for such purpose* If it be a correct premise that international law, in its changing phases with the passing of time, still applies to the States of the American Union . collectively when accepted by their common sovereign agent, the federal govern- ment, and further applies to the States separately when not inconsistent with the quasi-international law more directly established among them by compacts, customs and United States Supreme Court decisions, then the status of the law of international waters since the World War becomes material here. To the end that the influence of the post-war customs and conventional practice of nations upon international law as accepted by the United States may not be overlooked in the continuance of this study, it seems proper here to digress and briefly to consider the effect of that oataclysmal avulsion upon sovereign water rights. . • l67Act of Aug. 23, 1921, c. 77, l£ Stat. at L. 17U« Consult: N.Y. Laws 1921, o. 15]+, N. J. Laws 1921,.c. 151«, Act of July 1, 122, c. 277, 1+2 Stat. at L. 822. Consult* N.Y. Laws 1922, o» h3i N.J. Laws 1922, o. 9» •¦.¦¦,. . This compact is discussed in Newark v. Central R.R. of N. J. 267 U.S. 377* 1+5 Sup- Ct. 328, 69 L. Ed. 666 (I925), aff*g 297 Fed. 77 (G.C.A. 3rd Cir. I92I4.} afftg 287 Fedo 196 (D.CN.J. 1923). l68New York v. New Jersey, 256 U.S. 296, 313,1+1 Sup. Ct. 1+92, I4.98, 65 L. Ed. 937, 9J+5 (1921), consult also, 21+9 U.S. 202, 39 Sup. Ct ? 26l, 63 L. Ed. 560 (1919)« The Court held that the complaining State had not proven facts sufficient to entitle it to relief, but that its right to relief upon, due proof of pollution of the boundary waters by the defendant State was clear. Th.is controversy, or its counterpart, has broken ?out. anew with the filing of a su.it by New Jersey against the City of New York in the United States Supreme* Court to restrain that city from, dump ing garbage and refuse into the Atlanti 0 Ocean at places where tides,, currents and winds cause the same to be washed up on the New Jersey shores. The Court has appointed a special master |
