Three Leagues Under the Sea?

One reason why Texas liked Ike in 1952 was that Candidate Eisenhower came out foursquare for giving the states title to the disputed "tidelands" -and Texas expected to pump a lot of revenue out of offshore oil. In a campaign speech in Houston that year, Ike even endorsed Texans' claim that their state really extends three marine leagues (10 1/2 miles) out into the Gulf of Mexico, just as the Republic of Texas did before it joined the U.S. in 1845. Ike kept the campaign promise: in 1953 he signed a bill (similar to bills that Harry Truman had vetoed) turning over to the states the "submerged lands" out to the three-mile limit -"unless" the state's "historic" boundary lay farther out. Texas was mighty pleased.

Last week the Justice Department filed in the Supreme Court a Texas-sized 425-page brief -the longest federal brief in the court's history. It argued that Texas, Louisiana and the other gulf states reach only three miles out, not three leagues, and dunned the states for some $100 million in oil revenues collected from drillers operating beyond the three-mile limit. The U.S., said the brief, has always fixed its national boundary at three miles offshore and has urged other nations to do likewise. "Manifestly, state boundaries cannot extend beyond the national boundary. By annexing Texas, the U.S. certainly did not commit itself to relinquish what has been a fundamental cornerstone of its world policy. That would mean in effect that Texas was not annexed to the U.S., but that the U.S. was annexed to Texas."

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