286
Opinion of the Court
1826). State courts, however, early on in Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Alabama, and North Carolina rejected the distinction and concluded the State presumptively held title regardless of whether the waterway was subject to the ebb and flow of the tide. See, e. g., Carson v. Blazer, 2 Binn. 475 (Pa. 1810); Cates v. Wadlington, 1 McCord 580 (S. C. 1822); Bullock v. Wilson, 2 Port. 436 (Ala. 1835); Collins v. Ben-bury, 3 Iredell 277 (N. C. 1842); but see Hooker v. Cummings, 20 Johns. 90 (N. Y. 1822). And this Court in describing the concept of sovereign lands rejected the requirement that navigable waters need be affected by the tides. Barney v. Keokuk, 94 U. S. 324, 337-338 (1877); cf. Propeller Genesee Chief v. Fitzhugh, 12 How. 443 (1852).
American law, moreover, did not recognize the sovereign's rights of private property (jus privatum) that existed in England, apart from the public's rights to this land (jus publicum). In England, for instance, the Crown had the exclusive right to hunt the "grand fishes," e. g., whales and sturgeons, of the sea. J. Angell, A Treatise on the Right of Property in Tide Waters and in the Soil and Shores Thereof 18-19 (1847). There was a particular aversion to recognizing in States the Crown's jus privatum right to seize private structures on shores and marshes reclaimed from tidewaters. See J. Gould, A Treatise on the Law of Waters including Riparian Rights, and Public And Private Rights In Waters Tidal And Inland § 32 (2d ed. 1891). All these developments in American law are a natural outgrowth of the perceived public character of submerged lands, a perception which underlies and informs the principle that these lands are tied in a unique way to sovereignty.
Idaho views its interest in the submerged lands in similar terms. Idaho law provides: "Water being essential to the industrial prosperity of the state, and all agricultural development . . . its control shall be in the state, which, in providing for its use, shall equally guard all the various interests involved. All the waters of the state, when flowing in their
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