Illinois Central Railroad Co. v. Illinois

ILLINOIS CENTRAL RAILROAD COMPANY v. ILLINOIS. ILLINOIS v. ILLINOIS CENTRAL RAILROAD COMPANY. CITY OF CHICAGO v. ILLINOIS CENTRAL RAILROAD COMPANY.

Appeals from the Circuit Court of the United States for the Northern District of Illinois.

Nos. 419, 608, 609. Argued October 12, 13, 14, 1892 — Decided December 5, 1892.

Decrees below affirmed with modifications; the cause remanded for the entry of a decree in conformity with the opinion; costs allowed to the State of Illinois and to the City of Chicago.

MR. JUSTICE FIELD delivered the opinion of the Court. MR. JUSTICE SHIRAS, with whom concurred MR. JUSTICE GRAY and MR. JUSTICE BROWN, delivered a dissenting opinion.

Mr. Benjamin F. Ayer and Mr. John N. Jewett argued the cause and filed briefs for the Illinois Central Railroad Company. Mr. George Hunt, Attorney General of Illinois, argued the cause and filed a brief for the State of Illinois. Mr. S. S. Gregory argued the cause and Mr. Miller was with him on the brief for the City of Chicago.

The report occupies pages 387 through 476 of volume 146 of the United States Reports. The statement by the Reporter and the extensive reproduction of pleadings, statutes, and record excerpts occupy pages 387 through 433; the opinion of the Court by Mr. Justice Field begins at page 433 and closes before page 465; the dissenting opinion of Mr. Justice Shiras, joined by Mr. Justice Gray and Mr. Justice Brown, begins at page 465, the report closing at page 476.

[146 U.S. 387] “This suit was commenced by the Attorney General of the State of Illinois, in the name of the State, in September, 1883, in a state court of Illinois, against the Illinois Central Railroad Company, a corporation created under the laws of Illinois, and against the city of Chicago. Its general object was to obtain a judicial determination of the title of certain lands on the east or lake front of the city of Chicago, between the Chicago river and Sixteenth street, which had been reclaimed from the waters of the lake and were occupied by the tracks, depots, warehouses, piers, and other structures of the railroad company, and also of the title claimed by the company to the submerged lands, constituting the bed of Lake Michigan, lying east of and adjoining its tracks within the corporate limits of the city, for the distance of a mile, and between the south line of the south pier near the mouth of the Chicago river extended eastwardly, and a line extended in the same direction from the south line of lot twenty-one south of and near to Sixteenth street.”

Editorial note. The Reporter then set out at length the pleadings of the parties, the successive Illinois enactments — in particular the act of April 16, 1869, purporting to grant to the railroad company the fee in the submerged lands of the outer harbor, and the act of April 15, 1873, purporting to repeal the earlier grant — the record of removal from the state court to the Circuit Court of the United States, the answers and cross-bills, and the decrees of the court below. That statement, spanning pages 387 through 433, is not reproduced in this record; the canonical source retains it in full.

[146 U.S. 452] “That the State holds the title to the lands under the navigable waters of Lake Michigan, within its limits, in the same manner that the State holds title to soils under tide water, by the common law, we have already shown, and that title necessarily carries with it control over the waters above them whenever the lands are subjected to use. But it is a title different in character from that which the State holds in lands intended for sale.”

[146 U.S. 452] “It is different from the title which the United States hold in the public lands which are open to preemption and sale. It is a title held in trust for the people of the State that they may enjoy the navigation of the waters, carry on commerce over them, and have liberty of fishing therein freed from the obstruction or interference of private parties.”

[146 U.S. 452] “The interest of the people in the navigation of the waters and in commerce over them may be improved in many instances by the erection of wharves, docks, and piers therein, for which purpose the State may grant parcels of the submerged lands; and, so long as their disposition is made for such purpose, no valid objections can be made to the grants.”

[146 U.S. 452] “It is grants of parcels of lands under navigable waters, that may afford foundation for wharves, piers, docks, and other structures in aid of commerce, and grants of parcels which, being occupied, do not substantially impair the public interest in the lands and waters remaining, that are chiefly considered and sustained in the adjudged cases as a valid exercise of legislative power consistently with the trust to the public upon which such lands are held by the State.”

[146 U.S. 453] “But that is a very different doctrine from the one which would sanction the abdication of the general control of the State over lands under the navigable waters of an entire harbor or bay, or of a sea or lake. Such abdication is not consistent with the exercise of that trust which requires the government of the State to preserve such waters for the use of the public.”

[146 U.S. 453] “The control of the State for the purposes of the trust can never be lost, except as to such parcels as are used in promoting the interests of the public therein, or can be disposed of without any substantial impairment of the public interest in the lands and waters remaining.”

[146 U.S. 453] “The State can no more abdicate its trust over property in which the whole people are interested, like navigable waters and soils under them, so as to leave them entirely under the use and control of private parties, except in the instance of parcels mentioned for the improvement of the navigation and use of the waters, or when parcels can be disposed of without impairment of the public interest in what remains, than it can abdicate its police powers in the administration of government and the preservation of the peace.”

[146 U.S. 454] “Any grant of the kind is necessarily revocable, and the exercise of the trust by which the property was held by the State can be resumed at any time.”

[146 U.S. 455] “The act of the general assembly of Illinois of April 16, 1869, in so far as it attempted to grant to the Illinois Central Railroad Company the submerged lands constituting the bed of Lake Michigan, extending one mile from the shore, and embracing between the south line of the south pier extended eastwardly and a line extended in the same direction from the south line of lot twenty-one south of and near Sixteenth street, being about a mile in length, was inoperative to affect, modify or in any respect to control the sovereignty and dominion of the State over the lands, or its ownership thereof, and that any such attempted operation of the act was annulled by the repealing act of April 15, 1873, which to that extent was valid and effective.”

[146 U.S. 463] “Our conclusion, therefore, is, that the decree of the court below must be affirmed as to the conclusions of law stated in the eleven propositions above enumerated, with this modification: that the ownership of the submerged lands and the right to the possession thereof by the railroad company are subject to the terms and conditions imposed by the second section of the act of April 16, 1869, and to the rights of the State to resume possession at any time.”

[146 U.S. 464] “The cause will be remanded to the Circuit Court of the United States for the entry of a decree in conformity with this opinion; and it is So ordered.”

Editorial note. The dissent read the Illinois cases as recognising a general power in the legislature to grant submerged lands in aid of railroad and harbour development, and would have sustained the grant of 1869 accordingly. In its view the earlier act was a lawful legislative disposition, made in aid of commerce and navigation, and could not be undone by simple repeal without impairing the vested rights of the grantee.

Editorial note. The dissent further reasoned that the terms and conditions of the 1869 act sufficiently protected the public interest in the outer harbour, and that the majority's public-trust reasoning was novel as a rule of federal law and unsuited to overturn a considered state grant. It would therefore have reversed the decree so far as it treated the 1869 grant as inoperative.

Editorial note. This record is a research edition, not a substitute for the official reporter. It reproduces the Reporter's caption and abbreviates the extensive Reporter statement at pages 387 through 433, reproduces the Court's own text in extended verbatim passages arranged in the Court's own sequence of analysis, each bracketed with the official United States Reports page on which the passage appears, and summarises the dissent. Passages set without quotation marks are Society prose; every quotation mark encloses the Court's or the Reporter's words.

Editorial note. The Court-authored sections are SELECTED EXCERPTS. Three limitations are declared. First, the Court's discussion of prior Illinois legislation, of the Chicago fire, of the political history of the 1869 and 1873 acts, and of the many state and English authorities canvassed in the course of the opinion is summarised rather than quoted in full. Second, the Court's separate treatment of the reclaimed lands west of the tracks between the Chicago River and Sixteenth Street, and of the rights of the City of Chicago as a riparian owner, is not reproduced. Third, the dissenting opinion is presented as a Real Law Society editorial summary and is not judicial text.

Editorial note. The digitised bound volume contains occasional optical-recognition defects; these have been silently corrected against the surrounding text, and no substantive word has been altered inside a quotation. For the complete official text, including the Reporter's full statement and the dissent, consult the bound volume through the canonical source recorded with this authority.

Editorial note. By an act of April 16, 1869, the Illinois General Assembly purported to grant to the Illinois Central Railroad Company the fee in more than a thousand acres of submerged land forming the outer harbour of Chicago on Lake Michigan, extending a mile from the shore and running some four thousand feet from the Chicago River to a point south of Sixteenth Street, subject to conditions concerning wharfage rates and the payment of a share of gross earnings. Four years later, by an act of April 15, 1873, the Assembly repealed the grant. In the meantime the railroad had entered upon the reclaimed portions of the shore and had built extensive tracks, depots, and piers on land that had been raised out of the water.

Editorial note. In 1883 the Attorney General of Illinois sued in state court to establish the State's title to the reclaimed lands and to have the 1869 act declared void so far as it purported to convey the submerged lands of the outer harbour. The City of Chicago intervened as a riparian owner. The suit was removed to the Circuit Court of the United States for the Northern District of Illinois.

Editorial note. The Circuit Court entered a decree setting out eleven propositions of law: that the State was the owner in fee of the submerged lands, that the 1869 act was inoperative to convey them, that the 1873 act was valid, and that the railroad's rights were confined to those of a riparian owner and to structures already lawfully erected under other authority. All three parties appealed. The Supreme Court, in an opinion by Justice Field, affirmed the decree with modifications and remanded the cause for the entry of a decree in conformity with the opinion; costs were allowed to the State and to the City.

Editorial note. Two propositions were decided. First, the title of a State to the beds of navigable waters within its limits is a title held in trust for the people for navigation, commerce, and fishing, and while the State may grant parcels in aid of those uses — for wharves, docks, and piers — it cannot abdicate its general control over an entire harbour or bay. Second, the 1869 act was on that ground inoperative to convey the submerged lands of the Chicago outer harbour, and the 1873 repealing act was to that extent valid; the railroad remained an ordinary riparian owner with the rights lawfully acquired before the repeal.

Editorial note. Justice Field grounded the decision in the character of the title itself. The State held the beds of navigable waters not as ordinary public land held for sale, but as trustee for public uses — navigation, commerce, and fishing. Trust property could be granted in parcels where the grant advanced those uses or left the public interest in what remained substantially unimpaired; wharves, docks, and piers were the standard examples. What the trust would not tolerate was the wholesale surrender of a harbour to a single private grantee, for that would place at private disposal the very interest the State was bound to preserve. On that reasoning the 1869 act was necessarily revocable, the 1873 repeal was valid, and the ordinary rules of vested rights and impairment of contracts did not sustain the grant.

Editorial note. Illinois Central is the foundational federal authority on the public trust doctrine as it applies to the beds of navigable waters. It supplies the treatise's central proposition that a State may dispose of parcels of submerged land in aid of navigation and commerce but cannot alienate the general trust over a harbour, bay, sea, or lake; and it establishes that grants purporting to do so are revocable notwithstanding the ordinary protection given to vested legislative dispositions of property. The distinction it drew between parcels that promote the public interest and the wholesale surrender of that interest has organised American public-trust litigation ever since.

Editorial note. Followed. The public trust holding has been reaffirmed and applied by the Supreme Court and by state courts of last resort in the century since decision, and provides the analytic frame for restrictions on legislative alienation of shorelands, harbour beds, and other submerged public lands.

Editorial note. Read with Martin v. Waddell's Lessee, 41 U.S. (16 Pet.) 367 (1842), and Pollard v. Hagan, 44 U.S. (3 How.) 212 (1845), on the character of state title to lands beneath navigable waters; and with the public trust discussions in later shoreland and tidelands cases addressing legislative alienation.