Tidelands Decision

Back in 1953, Dwight Eisenhower's Republican Congress passed the Submerged Lands Act that awarded the oil-rich "tidelands" off U.S. shores to the states instead of the Federal Government--just as Ike had promised to do in his campaign. But the law had a basic flaw. It set a three-mile limit for Atlantic and Pacific states, yet allowed the states on the Gulf of Mexico--which has most of the under water oil--to claim up to three leagues (10.3 miles) of offshore land, provided that those boundaries existed "at the time such State became a member of the Union, or as heretofore approved by Congress." Who was to untie the knots of history? Being too divided to do so itself, Congress intentionally left that chore to the court.

Last week, by votes of 6 to 1, the Supreme Court ruled that: P: The borders of Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi extend seaward for three nautical miles, i.e., 3.45 miles. P: The borders of Texas and Florida extend seaward for three leagues, i.e., 10.3 miles.

To find historic precedent for Texas' claim, the court dug back to the Congress-approved treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo, which ended the Mexican War in 1848 and extended the Mexico-Texas border three leagues into the Gulf.* Florida was also entitled to three leagues because it claimed that boundary in its post-Civil War constitution, rammed through by a carpetbagger and scalawag-packed state constitutional convention and approved by Congress in 1868. Because Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama made considerably less extravagant claims back in the 1860s, they got considerably less from the Supreme Court in 1960.

For Texas, which now plans its first major sale of offshore leases since 1953, the decision will mean millions of dollars annually. For Louisiana, it means the possible loss of more than $300 million in past bonuses and royalties from the disputed lands, which last year yielded 29 million bbl. of oil and 174 billion cu. ft. of natural gas. The money is now held in escrow, and Louisiana will seek redress from Congress. It has a few arguing points: if its boundaries extend three miles from the coast, no one has decided where the jagged coastline begins, or who is to reap the revenues from oil produced off the shores of its islands more than three miles out.

Last week Congressmen criticized the court for an uneven decision and promised to hopper several bills to change it. With somewhat better cause, Justice John Marshall Harlan criticized Congress for passing "this ill-defined statute," which compelled seven judges to write six separate decisions that settled the claims of five states by setting two different sets of boundaries.

* The treaty was a quirk of history, negotiated by one of history's most shadowy figures, Nicholas P. Trist, onetime chief clerk of the State Department. President Polk dispatched Trist to Mexico to frame the treaty, then disapproved of the way he was handling the job and dismissed him. Nevertheless, Trist went ahead and negotiated the pact and signed it. Legally, it was worthless. But the nation was so eager to end the war that Polk was almost compelled to accept the treaty. Why did Trist push Texas three leagues into the Gulf? Answer: because Texas had claimed those boundaries when it became a republic in 1836. Says Texas Attorney General Will Wilson: "We won the tidelands as a legacy of Sam Houston's dream of a Republic of Texas going all the way to the West Coast. The expansionist ambitions of the early Texans have ironically resulted in giving Texas a Gulf Coast region that may be worth untold billions."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.