Cite as: 540 U. S. 56 (2003)
Opinion of the Court
thority, the fishing right in the same article was subjected to mutually agreed-upon regulation. We agree with Virginia that these differing approaches to rights contained in the same article of the 1785 Compact indicate that the drafters carefully delineated the instances in which the citizens of one State would be subject to the regulatory authority of the other. Other portions of the 1785 Compact reflect this design. See Article Fourth (providing that certain vessels "may enter and trade in any part of either state, with a permit from the naval-officer of the district from which such vessel departs with her cargo . . ."); Article Eighth (providing for joint regulation of navigation on the River); Article Ninth (providing for a bistate commission to govern the erection of "light houses, beacons, buoys, or other signals"). Id., at 342-343. If any inference at all is to be drawn from Article Seventh's silence on the subject of regulatory authority, we think it is that each State was left to regulate the activities of her own citizens.
Maryland, however, argues that we must read Article Seventh's regulatory silence in her favor because her sovereignty over the River was "well-settled" by the time the 1785 Compact was drafted. Exceptions of Maryland to Report of Special Master 19 (hereinafter Md. Brief). Maryland is doubtless correct that if her sovereignty over the River was well settled as of 1785, we would apply a strong presumption against reading the Compact as stripping her authority to regulate activities on the River. See, e. g., Massachusetts v. New York, 271 U. S. 65, 89 (1926) ("[D]ominion over navigable waters, and property in the soil under them, are so identified with the exercise of the sovereign powers of government that a presumption against their separation from sovereignty must be indulged"). But we reject Maryland's historical premise.
Each State has produced reams of historical evidence to support its respective view about the status of sovereignty over the River as of 1785. We need not delve deeply into
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