Border Disputes History

With the Georgia-Tennessee Water Wars heating up and Tennessee not giving in to Georgia's demands, politicians in Atlanta are predicting they'll have to take the dispute to the U-S Supreme Court..

So we wondered, what would happen if it gets there?

Have there been other disputes between governments over things like water?

We've discovered a war with no guns, no bullets, but a whole lot of words. Border disputes are indeed, the new "War.. Between the States." We found an old newspaper article, with the headline: "State Boundary Line In Dispute."

"Mistake of Early Mapmaker Said to be Cause of Troubles."

Sound familiar?

That's the argument that Georgia is using against Tennessee, to try and move their border a mile NORTH of where it is. But this isn't Georgia-Tennessee, 2008.

It's Wisconsin-Michigan.

And it's 1921..

"It's got to be because they have an asset that the other state wanted, and was not legally entitled to, without a lawsuit," says U.T.C. History Professor Mike Russell.

U-T-C History Professor Mike Russell says that particular fact, has always led to state boundary disputes. He says, usually, it's about water.. Just like Georgia-Tennessee.

In this case, Wisconsin laid claim across the border to Hurley, Michigan.. Said to be the "richest village in the world."

"The richest village in..," Dr. Russell read to himself, "they want tax money," he chuckled.

We did some research, and found border problems in this country dating all the way back to 18-30. The first case was New Jersey versus New York.. They were disputing which one of them owned Ellis Island..

The second case was Rhode Island versus its neighbor Massachusetts. We dug deeper, and dozens of state border disputes popped up..

Almost every state in the union has had SOME kind of fight with its neighbor..

Virginia- Maryland.. Tennessee-Kentucky.. Florida-Georgia.They've been in court twice over two seperate disputes. Most of those cases have ended up in the U.S. Supreme Court.

"Generally the court has maintained the original borders," says attorney Chuck Fleischmann, "and the reason for that is, they try to avoid it, they try to get the parties to work it out with the commission format."

But our research found a case that is similar to Georgia-Tennessee's. Oklahoma sued Texas for land along its common Red River border.. That dispute dragged on over 200 years.

Any alleged misplacement of the Georgia-Tennessee line has been at least that long ago, without Georgia trying to do anything about it. Could this be the deal-breaker?

"As long as Georgia did not do anything for such a long period of time, in other words, sit on any rights that they may have had," says Mr. Fleischmann, "they would lose those and the court would uphold the Tennessee border."

Tennessee says there's no problem with the border, so it refused to establish a commission to study Georgia's dispute, which Mr. Fleischmann says, was a trap that Georgia laid for Tennessee.

If Tennessee had established a commission, that's considered an acknowledgement that there is indeed a problem.