788
Opinion of the Court
Since the 19th century the most generous settled view has been that discovery accompanied by symbolic acts gives no more than "an inchoate title, an option, as against other states, to consolidate the first steps by proceeding to effective occupation within a reasonable time." 8 I. Brownlie, Principles of Public International Law 146 (4th ed. 1990); see also 1 C. Hyde, International Law 329 (rev. 2d ed. 1945); 1 L. Oppenheim, International Law §§ 222-223, pp. 439-441 (H. Lauterpacht 5th ed. 1937); Hall, A Treatise on International Law, at 102-103; 1 J. Moore, International Law 258 (1906); R. Phillimore, International Law 273 (2d ed. 1871); E. Vattel, Law of Nations § 208, p. 99 (J. Chitty 6th Am. ed. 1844). Thus, even on the remote Pacific atoll mentioned in Justice Stevens's dissent, post, at 824, something well beyond "[a] solitary fingerprint," post, at 815, will always be necessary to carry the day. This rule underscores the burden on a sovereign claimant to an atoll already subject to clear title, as under the law of avulsion. Hence the law's emphasis on the necessary length and continuity of adverse activity, and the requirement to prove a knowing acquiescence in the claimant's demonstrated design. Conversely, the original titleholder's only obligation is that of refusing to acquiesce in the hostile behavior of a rival sovereign claimant that was or should have been known to be disputing the earlier title.9 Since the parties do not start out as equals in
8 After all, a contrary rule "would be an absolute infringement of the natural rights of men, and repugnant to the views of nature, which, having destined the whole earth to supply the wants of mankind in general, gives no nation a right to appropriate to itself a country, except for the purpose of making use of it, and not of hindering others from deriving advantage from it." E. Vattel, Law of Nations § 208, p. 99 (J. Chitty 6th Am. ed. 1844).
9 Accordingly, New York cannot meet its burden of proving prescription by pointing to New Jersey's failure to present evidence that it exercised dominion over the filled portions of the Island occupied by the United States or secondary evidence that third parties understood the filled land
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