Attempts to Expand the "Commons"
as Exception to the
"Privileges & Immunities" Clause

In Toomer v. Witsell,  334 U.S. 385 (1948,) the Court summarized the appellees' argument for special fishing privileges and immunities. The argument confuses  "common piscary" in the  "fishery," (a place of fishing associated with State ) with the concept of "common" (meaning "joint") ownership of all the animals themselves by State residents. It claims a State obligation to manage said resources for the exclusive benefit of State residents - thereby exempting such management from the "Privileges and Immunities" clause.

"... Their argument runs as follows: Ever since Roman times, animals ferae naturae, not having been reduced to individual possession and ownership, have been considered as res nullius or part of the 'negative community of interests' and hence subject to control by the sovereign or other governmental authority. More recently this thought has been expressed by saying that fish and game are the common property of all citizens of the governmental unit and that the government, as a sort of trustee, exercises this 'ownership' for the benefit of its citizens. In the case of fish, it has also been considered that each government 'owned' both the beds of its lakes, streams, and tidewaters and the waters themselves; hence it must also 'own' the fish within those waters. Each government may, the argument continues, regulate the corpus of the trust in the way best suited to the interests of the beneficial owners, its citizens, and may discriminate as it sees fit against persons lacking any beneficial interest. Finally, it is said that this special property interest, which nations and similar governmental bodies have traditionally had, in this country vested in the colonial governments and passed to the individual States.

"Language frequently repeated by this Court appears to lend some support to this analysis. But in only one case, McCready v. Virginia, 1876, 94 U.S. 391, has the Court actually upheld State action discriminating against commercial fishing or hunting by citizens of other States where there were advanced no persuasive independent reasons justifying the discrimination. In that case the Court sanctioned a Virginia statute applied so as to prohibit citizens of other States, but not Virginia citizens, from planting oysters in the tidal waters of the Ware River. The right of Virginians in Virginia waters, the Court said, was 'a property right, and not a mere privilege or immunity of citizenship.' And an analogy was drawn between planting oysters in a river bed and planting corn in state-owned land.

"It will be noted that there are at least two factual distinctions between the present case and the McCready case. First, the McCready case related to fish which would remain in Virginia until removed by man. The present case, on the other hand, deals with free-swimming fish which migrate through the waters of several States and are off the coast of South Carolina only temporarily. Secondly, the McCready case involved regulation of fishing in inland waters, whereas the statute now questioned is directed at regulation of shrimping in the marginal sea."

..."However satisfactory the ownership theory explains the McCready case, the very factors which make the present case distinguishable render that theory but a weak prop for the South Carolina statute. That the shrimp are migratory makes apposite Mr. Justice Holmes' statement in Missouri v. Holland, 1920, 252 U.S. 416, 434, 384, 11 A.L. R. 984, that 'To put the claim of the State upon title is to lean upon a slender reed. Wild birds are not in the possession of anyone; and possession is the beginning of ownership.' Indeed, only fifteen years after the McCready decision, a unanimous Court indicated that the rule of that case might not apply to free-swimming fish. The fact that it is activity in the three-mile belt which the South Carolina statute regulates is of equal relevance in considering the applicability of the ownship doctrine. While United States v. California, 1947, 332 U.S. 19, as indicated above, does not preclude all State regulation of activity in the marginal sea, the case does hold that neither the thirteen original colonies nor their successor States separately acquired 'ownership' of the three-mile belt.

"The whole ownership theory, in fact, is now generally regarded as but a fiction expressive in legal shorthand of the importance to its people that a State have power to preserve and regulate the exploitation of an important resource. And there is no necessary conflict between that vital policy consideration and the constitutional command that the State exercise that power, like its other powers, so as not to discriminate without reason against citizens of other States."

 

In Baldwin v. Montana Fish and Game Comm'n., 436  U.S. 371 (1978,) Justice Blackmun further explains the reasoning behind early claims:

"Many of the early cases embrace the concept that the States had complete ownership over wildlife within their boundaries, and, as well, the power to preserve this bounty for their citizens alone. It was enough to say "that in regulating the use of the common property of the citizens of [a] state, the legislature is [not] bound to extend to the citizens of all the other states the same advantages as are secured to their own citizens." Corfield v. Coryell, 6 F. Cas. 546, 552 (No. 3,230) (CC ED Pa. 1825). It appears to have been generally accepted that although the States were obligated to treat all those within their territory equally in most respects, they were not obliged to share those things they held in trust for their own people. In Corfield, a case the Court has described as "the first, and long the leading, explication of the [Privileges and Immunities] Clause," see Austin v. New Hampshire, 420 U.S., at 661, Mr. Justice Washington, sitting as Circuit Justice, although recognizing that the States may not interfere with the "right of a citizen of one state to pass through, or to reside in any other state, for purposes of trade, agriculture, professional pursuits, or otherwise; to claim the benefit of the writ of habeas corpus; to institute and maintain actions of any kind in the courts of the state; to take, hold and dispose of property, either real or personal," 6 F. Cas., at 552, nonetheless concluded that access to oyster beds determined to be owned by New Jersey could be limited to New Jersey residents. This holding, and the conception of state sovereignty upon which it relied, formed the basis for similar decisions during later years of the 19th century. E. g., McCready v. Virginia, 94 U.S. 391 (1877); Geer v. Connecticut, 161 U.S. 519 (1896). See Rosenfeld v. Jakways, 67 Mont. 558, 216 P. 776 (1923). In Geer, a case dealing with Connecticut's authority to limit the disposition of game birds taken within its boundaries, the Court roundly rejected the contention "that a State cannot allow its own people the enjoyment of the benefits of the property belonging to them in common, without at the same time permitting the citizens of other States to participate in that which they do not own." 161 U.S., at 530.

"In more recent years, however, the Court has recognized that the States' interest in regulating and controlling those things they claim to "own," including wildlife, is by no means absolute. States may not compel the confinement of the benefits of their resources, even their wildlife, to their own people whenever such hoarding and confinement impedes interstate commerce. Foster-Fountain Packing Co. v. Haydel, 278 U.S. 1 (1928); Pennsylvania v. West Virginia, 262 U.S. 553 (1923); West v. Kansas Natural Gas Co., 221 U.S. 229 (1911). Nor does a State's control over its resources preclude the proper exercise of federal power. Douglas v. Seacoast Products, Inc., 431 U.S. 265 (1977); Kleppe v. New Mexico, 426 U.S. 529 (1976); Missouri v. Holland, 252 U.S. 416 (1920). And a State's interest in its wildlife and other resources must yield when, without reason, it interferes with a nonresident's right to pursue a livelihood in a State other than his own, a right that is protected by the Privileges and Immunities Clause. Toomer v. Witsell, 334 U.S. 385 (1948). See Takahashi v. Fish & Game Comm'n, 334 U.S. 410 (1948).

"Appellants contend that the doctrine on which Corfield, McCready, and Geer all relied has no remaining vitality. We do not agree. Only last Term, in referring to the "ownership" or title language of those cases and characterizing it "as no more than a 19th-century legal fiction," the Court pointed out that that language nevertheless expressed "`the importance to its people that a State have power to preserve and regulate the exploitation of an important resource.'" Douglas v. Seacoast Products, Inc., 431 U.S., at 284, citing Toomer v. Witsell, 334 U.S., at 402. The fact that the State's control over wildlife is not exclusive and absolute in the face of federal regulation and certain federally protected interests does not compel the conclusion that it is meaningless in their absence..."

Yet, in his concurring opinion in Baldwin, Chief Justice Burger still reveal an attachment to the belief in common public ownership of  game found within a State and a State obligation to manage as a public trust.

"The doctrine that a State "owns" the wildlife within its borders as trustee for its citizens, see Geer v. Connecticut, 161 U.S. 519 (1896), is admittedly a legal anachronism of sorts. See Douglas v. Seacoast Products, Inc., 431 U.S. 265, 284 (1977). A State does not "own" wild birds and animals in the same way that it may own other natural resources such as land, oil, or timber. But, as noted in the Court's opinion, ante, at 386, and contrary to the implications of the dissent, the doctrine is not completely obsolete. It manifests the State's special interest in regulating and preserving wildlife for the benefit of its citizens. See Douglas v. Seacoast Products, Inc., supra, at 284, 287. Whether we describe this interest as proprietary or otherwise is not significant."