Cite as: 516 U. S. 22 (1995)
Opinion of the Court
James W. McCartney argued the cause for defendant Houston Group. Robert R. Bailess argued the cause for defendant State of Mississippi. With them on the brief were Mike Moore, Attorney General of Mississippi, Robert E. Sanders, Assistant Attorney General, and Charles Alan Wright.
Justice Kennedy delivered the opinion of the Court.
Like the shifting river channel near the property in dispute, this litigation has traversed from one side of our docket to the other. We must first recount this procedural history.
In an earlier action, Mississippi citizens sued in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi to quiet title to the subject property. Certain Louisiana citizens were named as defendants. The parties asserted conflicting ownership claims to an area of about 2,000 acres, stretching seven miles along the Louisiana bank of the Mississippi River, near Lake Providence, Louisiana. The State of Louisiana and the Lake Providence Port Commission intervened in that action and filed a third-party complaint against the State of Mississippi. Concerned, however, with the jurisdiction of the District Court to hear its matter, Louisiana took the further step of instituting an original action in this Court, and it filed a motion here for leave to file a bill of complaint. We denied the motion. Louisiana v. Mississippi, 488 U. S. 990 (1988).
The District Court heard the case pending before it and, in an order by Judge Barbour, ruled in favor of Mississippi. Louisiana, however, prevailed in the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, 937 F. 2d 247 (1991), and we granted Mississippi's petition for certiorari. 503 U. S. 935 (1992).
After hearing oral argument on both substantive issues and jurisdiction, we resolved only the latter. We held that there was no jurisdiction in the District Court, or in the Court of Appeals, to grant any relief in the quiet title action
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