mpt from suit without further Congressional
authorization; it is as though their former immunity as sovereigns
passed to the United States for their benefit, as did their tribal
properties.[453]

Suits Between Two or More States

The extension of the federal judicial power to controversies between
States and the vesting of original jurisdiction in the Supreme Court of
suits to which a State is a party had its origin in experience. Prior to
independence disputes between colonies claiming charter rights to
territory were settled by the Privy Council. Under the Articles of
Confederation Congress was made "the last resort on appeal" to resolve
"all disputes and differences * * * between two or more States
concerning boundary, jurisdiction, or any other cause whatever," and to
constitute what in effect were _ad hoc_ arbitral courts for determining
such disputes and rendering a final judgment therein. When the
Philadelphia Convention met in 1787, serious disputes over boundaries,
lands, and river rights involved ten States.[454] It is hardly
surprising, therefore, that during its first sixty years the only State
disputes coming to the Supreme Court were boundary disputes[455] or that
such disputes constitute the largest single number of suits between
States. Since 1900, however, as the result of the increasing mobility of
population and wealth and the effects of technology and
industrialization other types of cases have occurred with increasing
frequency.

BOUNDARY DISPUTES; THE LAW APPLIED

Of the earlier examples of suits between States, that between New Jersey
and New York is significant for the application of the rule laid down
earlier in Chisholm _v._ Georgia,[456] that the Supreme Court may
proceed _ex parte_ if a State refuses to appear when duly summoned. The
long drawn out litigation between Rhode Island and Massachusetts is of
even greater significance for its rulings, after the case had been
pending for seven years, that though the Constitution does not extend
the judicial power to all controversies between States, yet it does not
exclude any;[457] that a boundary dispute is a justiciable and not a
political question;[458] and that a prescribed rule of decision is
unnecessary in such cases. On the last point Justice Baldwin stated:
"The submission by the sovereigns, or states, to a court of law or
equity, of a controversy between them, without prescribing any rule of
decision, gives power to decide accordi