THE COMPACT OF 1785
 The states of Maryland and Virginia by joint legislative action in
 1785 entered into a compact covering in general terms their rights,
 obligations and legal jurisdiction in the waters lying between and
 adjacent to both states.' The Compact still exists in its original form,
 though considerable parts of it are no longer effective because of
 being superseded by the Federal Constitution, and other parts of it
 have been extensively construed and restricted in judicial actions.
 The Compact continues to control the fishing rights of citizens of
 both states in the lower Potomac River, but it seems to have no
 other of its once extensive applications. Some Maryland officials
 and residents are seriously questioning, too, whether the Compact
 has not also outlived its usefulness in controlling these fisheries.
 Current problems of law enforcement are so difficult in that area
 that the Compact seems no longer to have any utility to Maryland,
 and the possibilities of repealing it or changing methods of
 enforcement are being freely discussed.
1. BACKGROUND
 The immediate explanation for the Compact of 1785 lies in the
 tangled relationships of all the adjoining states under the Articles of
 Confederation, during the years of the Revolution and after, until the
 Constitution of 1787 had been adopted and put into operation.
 Behind this situation lay also a century and a half of unsettled
 boundary questions between Maryland and Virginia in particular.
 While the Compact did little to settle boundary questions,
 1Up to 1927 the total number of inter-state compacts entered into was as follows: prior to 1776,
 9 ; during the period of the Articles of Confederation, 4; from 1789 to 1925, 39: pending in 1925, 3;
 Felix Frankfurter and James M. Landis. "The Compact Clause of the Constitution-a Study in
 Interstate Adjustments," 34 Yale Law Journal 685 (1925). More recent developments in this field may
 be followed in The Book of the States, published by the Council of State Governments.