ELLIS ISLAND, N.J. - In the centuries-old geographical grudge match, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that 27.5-acre Ellis Island belongs much more to New Jersey than New York, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Tuesday.

"This judgment by the Supreme Court doesn't change the history of Ellis Island," said Barry Moreno, the librarian for the Ellis Island Immigration Museum. "This doesn't change the past. This only changes the future. The immigrants came to Ellis Island, New York, not Ellis Island, New Jersey."

Perhaps the only real change will be the assessment and collection of state sales tax revenues from the museum's gift shop and restaurants. Since the museum opened in 1989, Aramark Corp., which sells souvenirs and food on the island, has charged New York state and city sales tax. The Supreme Court's decision Tuesday divides the museum's main building in a way that seems to put the gift shop in New Jersey but leaves the restaurant in New York, though part of the restaurant's outdoor seating area might be New Jersey as well.

"As a corporation, we will abide by whatever is decided," said James Anders, Aramark's general manager on Ellis Island. "We'll be more than happy to pay our taxes appropriately."

Anders said that he did not expect the court's decision to have any impact on business or on the 1.65 million people who visit the island each year. "It's a national monument, part of a national park," he said. "All they care about is that they can come out and see history."

And history grants both New York and New Jersey a prominent role in the arrival of America's immigrants. Of the 12 million or so immigrants who came through Ellis Island from 1892 to 1954, about two-thirds of them left the New York area for points west and south. From Ellis Island, they continued their journeys either by boat through the docks in Manhattan and Hoboken, N.J., or by train from Pennsylvania Station in New York or the New Jersey Central Railroad station in Jersey City.

Excerpts of ruling

Here are excerpts from the Supreme Court's 6-3 decision on Ellis Island. Justice David H. Souter wrote the majority opinion:

Ellis Island lies in New York Harbor 1,300 feet from Jersey City, New Jersey, and one mile from the tip of Manhattan. At the time of the first European settlement it was mostly mud, sand, and oyster shells, which nearly disappeared at high tide.

The Mohegan Indians called it "Kioshk," or Gull Island, while the Dutch of New Amsterdam, after its thrifty acquisition, renamed it (along with two other nearby specks) for the oyster, in recognition of the rich surrounding beds. England seized it from the Dutch in 1664, the same year that Charles II included the Island in a grant to his brother, the Duke of York, of the land and water of the present States of New York and New Jersey. The Duke in turn granted part of this territory to Lord Berkeley and Sir George Carteret, the proprietors of New Jersey, whose domain was described as "bounded on the east part by the main sea, and part by Hudson's river."

Having wasted no words, the noble grantor all but guaranteed the succession of legal fees and expenses arising from interstate boundary disputes, now extending into the fourth century since the conveyance of New Jersey received its seal.

After the Revolutionary War, New York and New Jersey began their long disagreement about the common boundary on the lower Hudson and New York Harbor, with New York arguing that the grant to the New Jersey proprietors set the line at New Jersey's shore and so preserved New York's sovereignty over the entire river, and New Jersey contending that as a co-equal State emerging after the Revolution it was entitled to a sovereign boundary in the middle of the river.

Between the two competing lines, of course, lay the Oyster Islands, one of which, in 1785, came into the private ownership of the eponymous Samuel Ellis, whose heirs would be its last private owners. In 1800, the State of New York ceded "jurisdiction" over the Island to the United States, reserving only the right to serve judicial process there. Act of Feb. 15, 1800, ch. 6 (1797-1800 N.Y. Laws p. 454). In 1808, after obtaining property title to the Island as well, the State of New York granted all of its "right, title and interest" in it to the United States, "for the )R purpose of providing for the defense and safety of the city and port of New-York." Act of Mar. 18, 1808, ch. 51 (1808 N.Y. Laws, p. 273); Act of Mar. 20, 1807, ch. 51 (1807 N.Y. Laws, p. 67); Deed to Ellis Island, by State of New York to the United States, June 30, 1808. Before the War of 1812 began, the United States Army had taken over the Island, which it improved with the construction of barracks and a magazine, and fortified with a battery of 20 guns.

In the meantime the two neighboring States tried to settle their controversy. In 1807, each appointed commissioners to prepare a compromise agreement, and when none was forthcoming the States allowed the controversy to simmer for another 20 years, when new commissioners were appointed. After they, too, had failed to agree, in 1829 New Jersey decided to seek a judicial resolution and filed suit against New York to establish its "rights of property, jurisdiction and sovereignty" west of the mid-point of the waters of the Hudson River and New York Bay. N.J. Exh. 293 (Complaint filed in New Jersey v. New York, p. 22 (1829)). New Jersey made it clear in its papers, however, that the dispute did not concern the islands in the waters between the two States, by conceding in its Bill in Equity that during the colonial period New York had taken possession of the islands "in the dividing waters between the two States," and "that the possession thus acquired by New York, ha(d) been since that time acquiesced in" by New Jersey. ...

Although we took jurisdiction over the suit, New Jersey v. New York, 5 Pet. 284 (1831), it was never tried to judgment. Instead, the States once again negotiated and in 1833 actually reached agreement. Each enacted the terms into law, 1834 N.Y. Laws, ch. 8; 1833-1834 N.J. Laws, pp. 118-121, and jointly they sought the approval of Congress under the Compact Clause of the United States Constitution, Art. I, 10, cl. 3. Congressional consent came with the Act of June 28, 1834, ch. 126, 4 Stat. 708.

The Compact comprises eight articles, the first three of which directly concern us here. Article First sets the relevant stretch of the "boundary line" between New York and New Jersey as the middle of the Hudson River "except as hereinafter otherwise particularly mentioned."

Article Second provides that "New York shall retain its present jurisdiction of and over Bedlow's (footnote 1) and Ellis's islands; and shall also retain exclusive jurisdiction of and over the other islands lying in the waters above mentioned and now under the jurisdiction of that state." Under Article Third, "New York shall have and enjoy exclusive jurisdiction of and over all the waters" between the two States as well as "of and over the lands covered by the said waters to the low water-mark on the westerly or New Jersey side thereof."

This jurisdiction is, however, "subject to (certain) rights of property and of jurisdiction of the state of New Jersey." That State, for example, "shall have the exclusive right of property in and to the land under water" on its side of the boundary line, as well as "the exclusive jurisdiction of and over the wharves, docks, and improvements, made and to be made on the shore of the said state." The terms of the congressional consent to the Compact close with the provision that "nothing therein contained shall be construed to impair or in any manner affect, any right of jurisdiction of the United States in and over the islands or waters which form the subject of the said agreement."

There is no evidence that New York collected any taxes from activities taking place on the Island until 1991, long after the possible prescription period was over. Nor was there any significant opportunity for New York to grant land or register deeds to land on the Island, actions that have produced evidence in prior cases when assessing prescriptive acts, see, e.g., Vermont v. New Hampshire, 289 U.S., at 614-615; Indiana v. Kentucky, 136 U.S. 479, 510 (1890); it is undisputed that by 1904 the United States held title to all of the Island. Nor was there the normal opportunity for a claimant State or its agencies to meet the normal governmental responsibility for public protection, as in providing police and fire protection to the disputed area.

The National Government had its own firefighting equipment and security force and rarely received any help from New York; the State showed that it furnished assistance on only three isolated occasions, in 1897 when the immigration depot burned to the ground, in 1903, when a cheating federal employee working in the telegraph office was sent off to the Ludlow Street jail in New York City, and in 1916, when German saboteurs set fire to barges that floated to Ellis Island and ignited the Island's seawall.

The United States's occupation of the land under the cession affected not only New York's opportunity to act in support of its claim but also the degree of attention that New Jersey may reasonably be supposed to have paid to whatever acts New York claims to have performed in asserting its jurisdiction.

Thus, for example, a State should well know that the residents of a populated enclave of its land have wholly failed to register or vote; but it is far less likely that New Jersey was aware of such resident population as the United States did maintain on the Island, or that it had any idea that some of those residents were registered to vote in New York instead of some other place where they might vote as absentees.

Governor Rockefeller put this point well when he remarked in 1959 that "(f)or more than fifty years, the question (of which State has sovereignty over Ellis Island) has been of relatively little importance because the Federal Government has owned and administered (the Island)." N.J. Exh. 123 (letter from Governor Rockefeller to Louis Harris, dated June 4, 1959).

In sum, the peculiar facts of this case affected New York's capacity to invoke a sovereign's claim as well as the significance of such acts it now adduces as prescriptive in character. New York's position as sovereign of the original Island under the Compact rendered any statement of "Ellis Island, New York" equivocal, without more, for prescriptive purposes, and the National Government's occupation tended to limit the notice to New Jersey of such acts as New York did perform.

To weigh New York's evidence with an appreciation of these twin hurdles is not, as Justice Stevens charges, to resort to hypertechnicality, but to recognize that New York has a substantial burden to establish that it gave good notice to New Jersey of its designs on the made land..

Pub Date: 5/28/98