Cite as: 523 U. S. 767 (1998)
Opinion of the Court
We assume that the parties to the Compact were well aware of our precedent and would have explicitly provided for a high-water mark boundary if that is what they intended.
Nor is our assumption unsettled by the fact, emphasized by New Jersey, that Article Third gives New York jurisdiction over "lands covered by the . . . waters [of the rivers and the Harbor] to the low-water mark on the westerly or New Jersey side thereof [subject to certain exceptions]." New Jersey argues that specification of a low-water mark as a jurisdictional boundary on the New Jersey shore suggests that some other, or high-water, line was intended elsewhere, as on Ellis Island. But we think any such inference would be unsound.
The jurisdiction bounded at the low-water mark under Article Third was New York's jurisdiction over the waters of the river and harbor. New York was also given jurisdiction over the land submerged by this water. Since jurisdiction over the submerged land followed from jurisdiction over the water, one might question whether the submerged land jurisdiction crept inland at high water. On the assumption that title to fast land generally extended to mean low water, the answer to this question was wholly academic so far as it related to Ellis Island and the other islands, but of potential consequence so far as it concerned the New Jersey shore. If New York's jurisdiction over submerged lands moved inland on Ellis Island with rising water, it would simply extend over land already subject to New York's jurisdiction under the general rule recognized in Handly's Lessee, since New York had jurisdiction over the original Island. But that would not be so on the New Jersey shore. If New Jersey's sovereignty extended to mean low water under the general rule, there would be a conflict with New York's jurisdiction over submerged lands on the margin covered by high water. The specification that New York's submerged land jurisdiction would stop at the low-water mark on the New Jersey shore thus resolved a question that would only arise at that
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