navigability
Definitions from Case Law · United States Supreme Court
Definitions from Case Law
From 295 U.S. 1 - United States v. Oregon · 1935Most cited · 489 citing opinions
These conditions preclude the use for navigation of the area in question, in its natural and ordinary condition, according to the customary modes of trade or travel over water, and establish an absence of that capacity for general and common usefulness for purposes of trade and commerce which is essential to navigability.
How the Supreme Court has restated “navigability”
Each Supreme Court definition of “navigability,” sized by how often later courts cited it. “Change” is measured by wording overlap with earlier definitions — a rough signal, not a semantic judgment.
How often courts cite the cases defining “navigability”
Court decisions citing the 3 opinions that defined “navigability” — 660 in all, by decade. Counts are citations to the defining cases as a whole, not verified uses of the term. The dip in the most recent years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the latest years.
All 3 definitions, chronological · 1914–1971
- ORIGINAL
The ordinance for the government of the Northwest territory and the subsequent acts of Congress set out in the information do not determine navigability of the streams, but only define rights which depend upon its existence. ... the fact of navigability having been decided against the state by the state court, there is no Federal right left to review. ... the question of navigability is purely one of fact.
question of fact
The lake was used as a highway and that is the gist of the federal test.
federal test