OCR Text |
Show -12- ratifying and enforcing agreements, the administration of agencies created by compacts, and adjudications involving them. 38 In addition,, the append- ix contains an enumeration of agreements which became operative without Congressional consent and litigation under them, proposals for agreements which were never concluded, and, finally, important pending projects for compacts awaiting State or Congressional ratification.39 Despite the relatively limited resort to this constitutional machinery in the adjustment of interstate relations, its use to date reveals the poss- ibility of the wide scope of legislative problems for which it is available. Difficulties in the following fields of legislation have elicited applica- tion of the Compact Clauses (1) Boundaries and cessions of territory. (2) Control and improvement of Navigation. (3) Penal jurisdiction. (4) Uniformity of legislation. (5) Interstate accounting- (6) Conservation of natural resources. (7) Utility regulation. (8) Taxation. (l) Boundary disputes were the earliest as they have been the most continuous occasions for invoking the Compact Clause. Here is a type of controversy, one would suppose, which is readily amenable to judicial settle- ment. In a dozen or so cases the judicial power of the Supreme Court was in fact invoked. Yet litigation in notable instances did not settle, or settle permanently, contentions between the States.40 Compacts furnished the solution 41 The Supreme Court itself has more than once adverted to the inadequacy of the judicial process, and counselled the parties to this 38 see Appx. A, III, infra. 59see Appx. A, IV-VI, infra. UORhode Island, v. Massachusetts, supra, note 33? Washington v. Oregon (1909) 2lU U, S« 205, 29 Sup. Ct. 631; Minnesota v. Wisconsin (1920) 252 u. s. 273, Uo Sup. ct. 313. W-§ee Compact between Massaciiusetts and Rhode Island of 1859* Appx. A, III, (7), infra. In Missouri v. Nebraska (1905) 197 U, S. 577* 25 Sup. Ct. 58O, the Supreme Court entered a decree in accordance with a stipulation of the parties agreeing to a former survey as determining the boundary line. This suggestion of a stipulation was made by the Court in the earlier case of Missouri v. Nebraska (190]+) 196 U. S. 23* 25 Sup. Ct. 155, where it was held that avulsion had not worked any change in the boundary. In Iowa v. Illinois (1893) lltf U. S. 1, 13 Sup. Ct. 239, the Court decided that the boundary line between the two States was the middle of the Mississippi River and ordered that a commission be appointed to ascertain and designate this line. The commissioners filed a report which the Court ordered to be confirmed, but which in lorn v. Illinois (I89I+) 151 u» S* 238, Ik Sup. Ct. 333, the Court set aside on the showing that Illinois had not concurred in the motion for the approval of the report as the Court believed it had. In Iowa v. Illinois (1906) 202 U. S. 59> 26 Sup. Ct. 571, both states moved |