OCR Text |
Show Certain it is. that the part of the waters of the stream the upper State may be willing to yield and the louver State may be content with receiving for the purpose of fixing the limits to which either may fif justly go in their respective future consumption of the waters of the stream, must depend upon the attendant facts. In any event, however, the final allocation or limits of use agreed upon must be of such a nature as to leave the States of origin free to develop according to changing future necessities and with dominion over the stream, as a nat- ural resource, with all rights of local sovereignty and eminent domain, subject only to the limitations voluntarily fixed by compact• To equit- ably apportion the present and future benefits of the streams among the contracting states^ in view of present and future conditions and neces- sities^, would be the duty of compact commissions* The rules of international and interstate law to be applied, are in full accord» Under the American rule of international law, as announced in the foregoing opinions of the Attorney General, mere rules of local administration of the use of the natural resource by the Nation among its citizens inter sesef usually classed as "riparian rights" or rights by "Prior appropriation^ and which are subject always to the future will of the Nation, cannot enter into a discussion of the rights of the Nations as such, but "The question must, therefore, be determined by considerations different from these which would apply between individual citizens of either country." and mere municipal regulations for the parceling out of the natural re- source among citizens cannot reach beyond national boundaries and pre- judice the rights of the Nation in its exercise of full and "complete sovereignty. Likewise the mere rules and laws of local administration by States of the Union of the use of the natural resources, the waters of the streams even though rising to the dignity of usufructuary titles of citizens inter sese, can have no extraterritorial application in a con- sideration of the rights of the States, The'sovereignty of each State is complete within its territory and the mere rights of its citizens to the usufruct of the resource is necessarily included within end sinks into insignificance when contrasted with the greater right -and sovereign- ty of the State. The rights of the States necessarily include the lesser rights and property interests of all the citizens thereof, who hold what they have subject always to the exercise of the sovereign will as ex- pressed by the Constitution and laws of. the States. What the citizen has or claims the State may deny or take away by eminent domain (sovereignty) for the general welfare and to supply the future and ever changing neces- sities of all the people, who collectively constitute the State. And each State possesses and may exercise its sovereignty to the same extent and upon en exact equality with all the rest* "Each State stands on the same level with all the rest0 It can impose its own legislation on no one of the others, and is bound to yield its own views to none". (206 U. S. I;6, 97«) Principles of international law, and not of State law, define the rights and powers of States of the Union. (200 U. S.'li96; 206 U, S« 1+6.) |