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Florida v. Georgia | |
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Argued January 8–9, 1855 Decided March 6, 1855 | |
Full case name | The State of Florida, Complainant v. The State of Georgia |
Citations | 58 U.S. 478 ( more ) |
Holding | |
The boundary between the State of Florida and the State of Georgia runs along "McNeil's line" according to the survey conducted on behalf of the U.S. government. | |
Court membership | |
| |
Case opinions | |
Majority | Taney, joined by Wayne, Catron, Nelson, Grier |
Dissent | Curtis, joined by McLean |
Dissent | Campbell, joined by Daniel |
Laws applied | |
28 U.S.C. § 1251; Art. I, Art, X U.S. Constitution |
Florida v. Georgia, 58 U.S. (17 How.) 478 (1854), was a United States Supreme Court case invoking the Court's original jurisdiction to determine boundary disputes between states. In this case the boundary dispute was between the State of Florida and the State of Georgia.
Florida claimed that the state line was a straight line (called McNeil's line, for the man who surveyed it for the U.S. government in 1825) from the confluence of Georgia's Chattahoochee and Flint rivers (forming the Apalachicola River, at a point now under Lake Seminole), then very slightly south of due east to the source of the St. Mary's River, which was the point specified in Pinckney's Treaty in 1795. [1] That eastern point of the straight line was near Ellicott mound, which was erected in 1799 at "about 30° 34' N." [2] The McNeil line was looked upon for more than 20 years as the proper location of the boundary.
Georgia claimed that the headwaters of the St. Mary's River were at the source of the southern branch, some 30 miles or nearly 50 kilometers south, at Lake Spalding or Lake Randolph. If upheld, Georgia would have obtained additional territory estimated at 800 to 2,355 square miles. The position of the U.S. commissioners was that the actual source of the St. Mary's was two miles north of the Ellicott mound. [2]
Other Supreme Court cases involving Georgia boundary disputes include: State of Alabama v. State of Georgia , 64 U.S. 505 (1860), and two Georgia v. South Carolina cases in 1922 and 1990.
Chief Justice Taney delivered the opinion of the Court, ruling in favor of Florida and setting the state boundary line along "McNeil's line." [1] This outcome was followed in 1859 by the surveying of the Orr and Whitner line. [2] On April 9, 1872, Congress approved the Orr and Whitner Line as part of the border between Georgia and Florida. [3]
Justice Curtis, joined by Justices McLean, Daniel and Campbell, delivered the dissenting opinion, asserting that the United States was effectively made a party through the Attorney General, and such intervention by the United States government was an impermissible intervention in matters of the individual states. [1]
Lowndes County is a county located in the south-central portion of the U.S. state of Georgia. As of the 2020 census, the population was 118,251. The county seat is Valdosta. The county was created December 23, 1825.
Early County is a county located on the southwest border of the U.S. state of Georgia. As of the 2020 census, the population was 10,854. The county seat is Blakely, where the Early County Courthouse is located. Created on December 15, 1818, it was named for Peter Early, 28th Governor of Georgia. The county is bordered on the west by the Chattahoochee River, forming the border with Alabama.
Pinckney's Treaty, also known as the Treaty of San Lorenzo or the Treaty of Madrid, was signed on October 27, 1795, by the United States and Spain.
The Chattahoochee River is a river in the Southeastern United States. It forms the southern half of the Alabama and Georgia border, as well as a portion of the Florida and Georgia border. It is a tributary of the Apalachicola River, a relatively short river formed by the confluence of the Chattahoochee and Flint rivers and emptying from Florida into Apalachicola Bay in the Gulf of Mexico. The Chattahoochee River is about 430 miles (690 km) long. The Chattahoochee, Flint, and Apalachicola rivers together make up the Apalachicola–Chattahoochee–Flint River Basin. The Chattahoochee makes up the largest part of the ACF's drainage basin.
The Tennessee River is the largest tributary of the Ohio River. It is approximately 652 miles (1,049 km) long and is located in the southeastern United States in the Tennessee Valley. The river was once popularly known as the Cherokee River, among other names, as the Cherokee people had their homelands along its banks, especially in what are now East Tennessee and northern Alabama. Additionally, its tributary, the Little Tennessee River, flows into it from Western North Carolina and northeastern Georgia, where the river also was bordered by numerous Cherokee towns. Its current name is derived from the Cherokee town, Tanasi, which was located on the Tennessee side of the Appalachian Mountains.
The Twelve-Mile Circle is an approximately circular arc that forms most of the boundary between Delaware and Pennsylvania. It is a combination of different circular arcs that have been feathered together.
Andrew Ellicott was an American land surveyor who helped map many of the territories west of the Appalachians, surveyed the boundaries of the District of Columbia, continued and completed Pierre (Peter) Charles L'Enfant's work on the plan for Washington, D.C., and served as a teacher in survey methods for Meriwether Lewis.
Ellicott's Stone, also known as the Ellicott Stone, is a boundary marker in northern Mobile County, Alabama. It was placed on April 10, 1799, by a joint U.S.-Spanish survey party headed by Andrew Ellicott. It was designated by the American Society of Civil Engineers as a Historic Civil Engineering Landmark in 1968 and was added to the National Register of Historic Places on April 11, 1973.
The United States of America was formed after thirteen British colonies in North America declared independence from the British Empire on July 4, 1776. In the Lee Resolution, passed by the Second Continental Congress two days prior, the colonies resolved that they were free and independent states. The union was formalized in the Articles of Confederation, which came into force on March 1, 1781, after being ratified by all 13 states. Their independence was recognized by Great Britain in the Treaty of Paris of 1783, which concluded the American Revolutionary War. This effectively doubled the size of the colonies, now able to stretch west past the Proclamation Line to the Mississippi River. This land was organized into territories and then states, though there remained some conflict with the sea-to-sea grants claimed by some of the original colonies. In time, these grants were ceded to the federal government.
Ellicott’s Rock is a survey marker placed in 1811 by Andrew Ellicott as part of his survey to resolve the boundary dispute between the U.S. states of Georgia and North Carolina.
New Mexico v. Texas, 275 U.S. 279 (1927), was a United States Supreme Court case that determined the boundary between Texas and New Mexico in the vicinity of El Paso, Texas.
James Moore Wayne was an American attorney, judge and politician who served as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1835 to 1867. He previously served as the sixteenth mayor of Savannah, Georgia, from 1817 to 1819 and the member of the United States House of Representatives for Georgia's at-large congressional district from 1829 to 1835, when he was appointed to the Supreme Court by President Andrew Jackson. He was a member of the Democratic Party.
Wilson v. Omaha Tribe, 442 U.S. 653 (1979), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that in a land dispute, 25 U.S.C. § 194 applied only to individuals and not a state, that federal law governed the tribe's right to possession, but that state law was to be used in determining how that applied to the natural movement of a river's boundaries.
State of Alabama v. State of Georgia, 64 U.S. 505 (1860), is a unanimous ruling by the Supreme Court of the United States which held that the true border between the states of Alabama and Georgia was the average water mark on the western bank of the Chattahoochee River. In coming to its conclusion, the Court defined what constituted the bed and bank of a river. The case has had international repercussions as well. The Supreme Court's definition was adopted by courts in the United Kingdom in the case Hindson v. Ashby (1896) 65 LJ Ch. 515, 2 Ch. 27.
Georgia v. South Carolina, 497 U.S. 376 (1990), is one of a long series of U.S. Supreme Court cases determining the borders of the state of Georgia. In this case, the Court decided the exact border within the Savannah River and whether islands should be a part of Georgia or South Carolina. It also decided the seaward border.
The Supreme Court of the United States, under Chief Justice Roger B. Taney (1836–1864), issued several important decisions on the status of aboriginal title in the United States, building on the opinions of aboriginal title in the Marshall Court.
The Tennessee–Georgia water dispute is an ongoing territorial dispute between the U.S. States of Tennessee and Georgia about whether or not the border between the two states should have been located farther north, allowing a small portion of the Tennessee River to be located in Georgia. The dispute has existed since the 19th century, but was further fueled by the increase in demand for water due to the rapid growth of the Atlanta metropolitan area which began in the latter 20th century.
Florida v. Georgia, 585 U.S. ___ (2018), was a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States in an original jurisdiction case. It involves a long-running dispute over waters within the ACF River Basin, running from the north Georgia mountains through metro Atlanta to the Florida panhandle, which is managed by the United States Army Corps of Engineers. Waters in the area have been stressed by the population growth of Atlanta over previous decades. The immediate case stemmed from droughts in 2011 and 2012 that caused economic damage to Florida due to lower water flows from the ACF River Basin into the panhandle, impacting its seafood production; Florida sought relief to have more water allocated towards them from the ACF by placing a water allocation cap on Georgia. The Supreme Court assigned a special master to review Florida's complaint, but ultimately found in 2016 that Florida had not fully demonstrated the need for more allocation. Florida challenged this determination to the Supreme Court. On June 27, 2018, the Supreme Court ruled 5–4 that the special master had not properly considered Florida's argument and remanded the case to be reheard and reviewed.