The Oregon Surveyor | Vol. 39, No. 3 10 CONTRASTING BOUNDARIES specically relevant terms, once that was done the judicial goal stood accomplished (FN 9). e Submerged Lands Act was thus elevated to a higher level of practical usefulness, to California and other coastal states, and clarication was obtained with regard to many other specic areas, as various issues stemming from the Act were judicially addressed in numerous cases set in California and elsewhere, such as the one just discussed, over the ensuing decades, leading up to the 2014 case which produced concern on the part of some land surveyors, more than 60 years subsequent to the 1953 Act. As noted in the initial article expressing that concern, in March 2015, the OSB has never been fully at rest, and has continued to tax judicial resources, as ambiguities arise from place to place in coastal areas, from Florida to Alaska, requiring litigation and adjudication, of the same kind that has been generated by a great many other federal enactments pertaining to land rights, which have been notoriously short on specicity. In the case of the Submerged Lands Act however, the lack of locational detail appearing in the Act itself was at least in substantial part intentional on the part of Congress. e principal intent of Congress in formulating the Act was to overcome and bypass the adverse economic consequences which federal domination of all of the coastal zones had inicted upon the coastal states. e primary focus of Congress was simply to achieve a preferable balance between the acknowledged federal responsibility to control all navigation in support of interstate commerce within such areas, and the right of the coastal states to derive nancial benet from precious undersea resources, which were found in very close proximity to their shores. e contributing legislators clearly and correctly never imagined themselves to be boundary experts, they simply trusted that any boundary issues which might develop would be wisely worked out, with judicial input when necessary, so they were fully comfortable putting in place a law which they well knew would, sooner or later, require the expertise of others to fully implement (FN 10). Proper appreciation of the 2014 SCOTUS decree requires us to be mindful that the OSB, or three mile territorial limit, has always been viewed and treated rst and foremost as a boundary between jurisdictions, rather than a typical title boundary, of the kind which our societal structure requires, wherever upland that is subject to independent development exists. Upon taking that perspective, we can see that the manner in which the positioning of that alignment or sequence of lines was handled was logically approved by SCOTUS in 2014 from a viewpoint focused upon practical convenience and usefulness, in order to enable that line to readily carry out its function, which is simply to provide clear and open notice to all marine operators of an important jurisdictional limitation in the area of their marine operations. Given this factual backdrop, illuminating the development of that line, it becomes clear that locational specicity, with reference to the line’s exact position in relation to the mainland, was quite justiably not the highest judicial priority relating to the demarcation of that line, since no relevant connection or controlling relationship between that line and the boundaries of any mainland title can be established. In summary, maintaining a precise relationship with the constantly uctuating actual coastal shoreline was simply never intended to be a paramount consideration in the establishment of this particular boundary, as many aspects of its legislative and judicial history very fully demonstrate. Today, as this is written, the principle of monument control remains unchallenged, as the highest form of boundary control, but that principle has never been truly absolute, and it was never intended to operate to control distant alignments, in the manner envisioned when the OSB baseline concept entered our body of law. e 2014 SCOTUS decree, as we have seen, although reliant upon the integrity of coordinates for boundary control purposes, merely follows existing judicial precedent, and thus cannot be properly characterized as a harbinger of the imminent demise of the principle of monument control. In November of 2015 a third article directly addressing the creation and the implications of the OSB appeared, and the author of this article, being an employee of the California State Lands Commission brought valuable personal knowledge of the methodology supporting the 2014 SCOTUS decree to the discussion. In addition to validating the integrity of the locative work done on the California portion of the OSB in recent years, by explaining that the process was a joint federal and state eort, in which numerous highly competent surveyors played an essential role, this article provided support for the position set forth in the prior article, dated June 2015, previously reviewed herein. As a highly experienced land surveyor, very well versed in the proper application of the fundamental principles that control the boundary resolution process, the author of this third article logically addressed the issues raised in the aforementioned March 2015 article from that perspective. Given that one of the core concerns over the validity of the OSB description approved by SCOTUS in 2014, expressed in that rst article, centered upon the fact that the description contains self-contradictory language, the discussion of the relevant principles in the third article appropriately began by citing the principal rule applicable to all description analysis. e language employed in any legal description must always be read, interpreted and given meaning, in the light of all the evidence indicating what that language meant to the parties who developed or selected the words that were used. Any wise and proper description
PLSO May June 2016
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