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Show If the separate sovereignties (the States) in Union only for Federal purposes have and do possess and exercise the powers to formulate and conclude binding conventions between each other and between one or more thereof and the Federal Government respecting boundaries, fisheries, har- bor control and pollution^ interstate easements and servitudes,, and like subjacts, there can be no logical objection to the application of like methods of solution to all problems growing out of the use and distribution of the waters of interstate streams* There, the only jurisdiction of the Federal Government is that respecting navigation or the fulfillment of treaties with foreign nations. Otherwise the States possess absolute do- minion over the streams within their respective territories, subject only to such limitations of the exercise of sovereignty as may be voluntarily imposed by interstate compacts, or may be impressed by decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in controversies between the States, wherein the equitable apportionment of the benefits of the interstate stream between the litigant States is made by the Court in view of all present and future conditions and necessities.. (Kans, vs. Colo, 206 U» Sc kt>t Uo Ss vs, Cross, 2JU3 U.- S. 316; U< S; vs „ Hanson, 167 Fedc 881? M3 D, Co. vsc Iowa, 226 U, Sc i;60,) All such problems respecting international rivers are settled by conventions between the nations whose territory is involved* The factors which prompt such methods between independent nations should apply between States of separate sovereignties and exclusive jurisdictions, yet bound together in a Federal Union of limited and delegated powers under a Con- stitution of their own creation„ By merely surrendering their rights of settlement of interstate conflicts by test of strength and creating a Supreme Court for judicial determination of their differences in the last extreme they did not surrender or forswear their right and duty of in- voking the more usual and peaceable method of joint conventions. While they did provide that the Congress of the Union should consent to or sanc- tion their conventions, in order that the Federal Union might not be set into confusion by conventions which might invade the powers surrendered by or prohibited to the States by the Constitution; and in order that a more perfect harmony might be perpetually preserved, nevertheless, with this one qualification they still retain the power o£ diplomatic treatment and adjustment in the first instance and, in view-of the common desire for Federal liarmony and interstate comity,* their duty would point in the direc- tion of friendly consideration and settlement of all matters relating to intersta-te rivers through the instrumentality of compacts, in the manner obtaining between friendly nations, before resort to the last extreme in the form of suit before the Supreme Court0 And we pause to suggest wherever the Federal Government, through its varied instrumentalities for Federal aid of intra-state development, may find itself in a position of present or future conflict with one or more of -the States, in its efforts to benefit the territory of some other State or States by use of waters from streams rising within and flowing through or between the former States,, it should refrain from methods of oppression and coercion against the complaining States and should use its Federal [position to bring about a definite understanding between the States involved and between those States and the United States, before proceeding |
