Oregon Officers Cross the Columbia to Arrest Washington Fishermen

The claim advanced by an Astoria judge that local police regulations of the state of Oregon relative to the salmon fisheries have an extra-territorial effect, and can be enforced against citizens of Washington conducting their fishing entirely within the territorial limits of this state, and in strict accord with the laws of this state, is an extraordinary one. It might be treated with contempt were it not for the fact that Oregon officers, acting on the instructions of this absurd court, have actually taken it upon themselves to enter this state and arrest our citizens and kidnap them, to be taken before the Oregon court for trial for this alleged offense against the Oregon laws.

The question of jurisdiction over the waters of the Columbia river and the soil under them is in no sense an open one. It is a matter of statute and constitutional law. When the territory of Washington was created from a portion of the territory of Oregon, its boundaries were defined by the act of congress. The boundary between the old territory of Oregon and the new one created was made in express terms the "middle of the main channel of the Columbia river, from its mouth to where the forty-sixth degree of north latitude crosses that river."

From that time forward neither Oregon territory nor the state subsequently created ever had any territorial jurisdiction of any kind, form or manner over any portion of the Columbia river north of the established boundary line, and never could acquire even a concurrent jurisdiction with this state over such waters, except in pursuance of a compact entered into between the two states relative thereto, and no such compact has ever been made.

The settled principles of the law are that the jurisdiction of the courts of a state are co-extensive with the sovereignty of the state, that state courts have no extra-territorial jurisdiction; that the laws of a state have no force outside of their territorial limits. All this is simply elementary law, which the Oregon court seems to have forgotten.

The fact is that the Oregon legislature has passed certain laws regulating the catch of salmon in that state. They are probably entirely proper regulations, and such as the legislature had a right to pass. Within the borders of the state the Oregon courts have a perfect right to enforce those laws. But the power of the Oregon legislature and the power of the Oregon courts stops at the territorial limits of that state. They have no more effect in the state of Washington than they would have in the province of British Columbia.

Washington also has police regulations for the control of the salmon fisheries. Those regulations differ from the Oregon laws on the same subject. What is a breach of the police regulations on the Oregon side is a perfectly lawful act within the territorial jurisdiction of Washington. This is possibly annoying to the Oregon fishermen, who see Washington citizens enjoying privileges in their own waters which are not granted to any man in Oregon waters. An elective judge, whose constituents are in a great majority fishermen, may sympathize with the annoyances of the men on whose votes he is dependent for re-election. But when he undertakes to extend the jurisdiction of his court into a neighboring state and issues warrants for the arrest of citizens of another state, who are engaged within the borders of their state in a perfectly lawful industry, he is going a little too far, and the officers of his court may find themselves caught up in some of the criminal statutes of Washington, if they continue their unlawful errand.

It is true that by compacts entered into between several of the Eastern states, each is given concurrent jurisdiction over the fisheries in the waters which form a common boundary, and the various state statutes have been regulated on that basis. For example, there is such a compact between Maryland and Virginia, entered into in 1785, and several others. But these states have been so jealous of any invasion of territorial sovereignty that the courts have construed that compact strictly. For example, it has been held in Maryland that an indictment for fishing with gill nets in the Potomac river was defective which did not aver that the act in question had been assented to by Virginia in accordance with the terms of the compact. New York and New Jersey have also a compact by the terms of which the former state is given concurrent jurisdiction over the Hudson river up to the low water mark on the New Jersey side, and to that extent the territorial dominion of New York is enlarged. There being no such compact with Connecticut, it is held by the New York courts that their territorial division, and consequently the jurisdiction of their courts, stops in the middle of the sound, where the boundaries of New York and Connecticut are co-terminous.

The whole matter becomes serious when it takes, as it has done, the form of making practically an armed invasion of this state for the purpose of capturing its citizens and taking them before a foreign court for trial for a pretended violation of the laws of a state within whose territorial limits the arrested men have never been, and certainly some steps ought to be promptly taken to prevent the possible trouble which may arise over such an unlawful invasion.