Cite as: 540 U. S. 56 (2003)
Syllabus
her governmental subdivisions, or her citizens to obtain a permit in order to construct improvements appurtenant to her shore or to withdraw water from the River. The Court referred the action to a Special Master, who issued a Report that, inter alia, concluded that the 1785 Compact and the Black-Jenkins Award gave Virginia the right to use the River beyond the low-water mark as necessary to the full enjoyment of her riparian rights; found no support in either of those documents for Maryland's claimed sovereign authority over Virginia's exercise of her riparian rights; rejected Maryland's argument that Virginia had lost her rights of waterway construction and water withdrawal by acquiescing in Maryland's regulation of activities on the River; and recommended that the relief sought by Virginia be granted. Maryland filed exceptions to the Report.
Held: 1. The Black-Jenkins Award gives Virginia sovereign authority, free from regulation by Maryland, to build improvements appurtenant to her shore and to withdraw water from the River, subject to the constraints of federal common law and the Award. Article Fourth of the Award and Article Seventh of the 1785 Compact govern this controversy. The plain language of the latter grants the "citizens of each state" "full property" rights in the "shores of Potowmack river" and the "privilege" of building "improvements" from the shore. The notable absence of any grant or recognition of sovereign authority to regulate the exercise of this "privilege" of the "citizens of each state" contrasts with Article Seventh's second clause, which recognized a right held by the "citizens" of each State to fish in the River, and with Article Eighth, which subjects that right to mutually agreed-upon regulation by the States. These differing approaches to rights indicate that the 1785 Compact's drafters carefully delineated the instances in which the citizens of one State would be subjected to the regulatory authority of the other. Other portions of the 1785 Compact also reflect this design. If any inference is to be drawn from Article Seventh's silence on the subject of regulatory authority, it is that each State was left to regulate the activities of her own citizens. The Court rejects the historical premise underlying the argument that Article Seventh's regulatory silence must be read in Maryland's favor because her sovereignty over the River was "well-settled" by the time the 1785 Compact was drafted. The Court's own cases recognize that the scope of Maryland's sovereignty over the River was in dispute both before and after the 1785 Compact. See, e. g., Morris v. United States, 174 U. S. 196, 224. The mere existence of the 1785 Compact further belies Maryland's argument in that the compact sought "to regulate and settle the jurisdiction and navigation"
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