284
Rehnquist, C. J., dissenting
a similar emphasis. See, e. g., Utah Div. of State Lands, supra, at 195; Montana, 450 U. S., at 551.1
Accordingly, insofar as the submerged lands at issue here are concerned, it is of no moment that Congress ultimately ratified the 1887 and 1889 negotiations. See ante, at 279. Well before it took such action, Congress had given its assent to Idaho's entry into the Union as a sovereign State and thereby joined with the Executive to extinguish the Federal Government's right to withhold title to submerged lands. It follows that Congress' acceptance of the fact that "the Coeur d'Alene Reservation shall be held forever as Indian land," ibid., does nothing to explain whether submerged lands were within that reservation at the time of—much less eight months after—Idaho's admission. By the same token, our inquiry is not illuminated by Congress' attempt in 1891 to affirm Chief Seltice's purported conveyance of certain lands to Frederick Post, see ante, at 271, 279, or by Congress' approval in 1894 of the so-called "Harrison cession," see ante, at 279-280. Simply put, the consequences of admission are instantaneous, and it ignores the uniquely sovereign character of that event for the Court to suggest that subsequent events somehow can diminish what has already been bestowed.
Second, all agree (at least in theory) that the question before us is "whether Congress intended to include land under navigable waters within the federal reservation and, if so, whether Congress intended to defeat the future State's title to the submerged lands," ante, at 273 (emphasis added). But the Court proceeds to determine this "intent" by considering what obviously are not Acts of Congress. Congress
1 The Court of Appeals stated that "we are aware of no rule forbidding consideration of such [post-statehood] events. Indeed, the case law may suggest the contrary. See Alaska Pacific Fisheries v. United States, 248 U. S. 78, 89-90 (1918)." 210 F. 3d 1067, 1079, n. 17 (CA9 2000). This citation is puzzling indeed, for Alaska was not admitted to the Union until some 40 years after the Court's decision in Alaska Pacific Fisheries.
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