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Show -22- a compact for these purposes and have named as their commissioners 2 Delph E. Carpenter, for the State of Colorado, and Stephen B. Davis, Jr., for the State of New Mexico, who have agreed upon the following articles." The Supreme Court of Colorado held the Compact unconstitutional because, for aught that appears, it embodies not a judicial; or quasi-judicial, decision of controverted rights, but a trading compromise of conflicting claims. The assumption that a judicial or quasi-judicial decision of the controverted claims is essential to the validity of a compact adjusting them, rests upon misconception. It ignores the history and order of de- velopment of the two means provided by the Constitution for adjusting inter- state controversies. The compact--the legislative m3ans--adapts to our Union of sovereign States the age-old treaty-making power of independent sovereign nations. Adjustment by compact without a judicial or quasi- judicial' determination of existing rights had been practiced in the Colonies, was practiced by the States before the adoption of the Constitution, and had been extensively practiced in the United States for nearly half a century before this Court first applied the judicial means in settling the boundary dispute -in Rhode Island v. Masachusetts, 12 Pet. 657, 7 The extent of the existing equitable rights of Colorado and of New Mexico in the La Plata River could obviously have been determined by a suit in this Court, as was done in Kansas v. Colorado, supra, in respect to, rights in the Arkansas River and in Wyoming v. Colorado, supra, in respect to the Laramie." But resort to the judicial remedy is never essential to -'Nine colonial boundary agreements are listed by Frankfurter and Landis The Compact Clause of the Constitution-A Study in Interstate Adjustments (1925) 34 Yale L. J. 685, 730-32. Five agreements made under the Articles of Confederation have been found. See Frankfurter and Landis, supra note 5* at 732-3U* n 'Nine compacts were apparently executed in this period (although five of these were without express Congressional consent). See Frankfurter and Landis, supra note 5, at 735-37> 749-52. See also Ely, Oil Conservation through Interstate Agreement (1933) 371-72, 389-91; (June I936) 9 State Government 118; Dodd, Interstate Compacts (I936) 70 U. S. L. Rev. 557, 574* The agreement between New Jersey and New York in I833 put an end to the boundary suit begun in 1829. New Jersey v. New York, 3 Pet. I4.6I, 5 Pet 284, 6 Pet. 323. : ~ p. ¦ ¦¦ . . See also Connecticut v. Massachusetts, 282 U. S. 660, 283 U. S. 789 (Connecticut River); New Jersey v. New York, 283 U. S. 336, 805 (Delaware River); -Wyoming v. Colorado, 286 U. S, 494, 298 U. S. 573 (Laramie River); Washington v« Oregon, 297 U« S. 517 (Walla Valla River). Three other water apportionment suits are pending in this Court. 'Colorado y. Kansas, Original No. 6 (Ar-kansas River); Nebraska v. Wyoming, 295 tf. S» 40, Original No. 9 (North Platte River); Texas v. New Mexico, Original No. 11 (Rio Grande). |
