Facts of the Case
This is a suit to establish by judicial decree the true boundary line between the States of Virginia and Tennessee. It embraces a controversy of which this Court has original jurisdiction, and in this respect the judicial department of our government is distinguished from the judicial department of any other country, drawing to itself by the ordinary modes of peaceful procedure the settlement of questions as to boundaries and consequent rights of soil and jurisdiction between states, possessed, for purposes of internal government, of the powers of independent communities, which otherwise might be the fruitful cause of prolonged and harassing conflicts.
Conclusions
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The boundary line between the States of Virginia and Tennessee, which was ascertained and adjusted by commissioners appointed by and on behalf of each State and marked upon the surface of the ground between the summit of White Top Mountain and the top of the Cumberland Mountains, having been established and confirmed by the State of Virginia in January, 1803, and by the State of Tennessee in November, 1803, and having been recognized and acquiesced in by both parties for a long course of years, and having been treated by Congress as the true boundary between the two States, in its districting them for judicial and revenue purposes, and in its action touching the territory in which Federal elections were to be held and for which federal appointments were to be made, was a line established under an agreement or compact between the two states, to which the consent of Congress was constitutionally given, and as so established, it takes effect as a definition of the true boundary, even if it be found to vary somewhat from the line established in the original grants.
Introducing “Article V 2.0”: The Compact for a Balanced Budget
Engage Volume 15, Issue 2
This article discusses the use of interstate compacts to advance Article V amendments to the U.S....
