O.C.G.A 44-8-6 states, “The title to the beds of all non-navigable tidewaters where the tide regularly ebbs and flows shall vest in the owner of the adjacent land for all purposes…”. Then states, “If the water is the dividing line between two parcels of land, each owner’s boundary shall extend to the main thread or channel of the water.” O.C.G.A. States, “(b) For all purposes, including, among others, the exclusive right to the oysters and clams but not other fish therein or there on, the boundaries and rights of the owners of land adjacent to or covered in whole or in part by navigable tidewaters shall extend to the low-water mark in the bed of the water”. So it sounds like non-navigable tidewater is essentially looked upon as non-navigable streams, owners of adjacent property owns the bed, if owners on opposite sides, boundary is to the center of the stream. For navigable tidewaters boundary is to the low-water mark. That all seems simple enough.

However, Mr. Cadles’s book “Georgia Land Surveying History and Law”, states “So it will be seen that private ownership along tidewaters and the ocean does and always has, presumptively, extended only to the ordinary high-water mark.” Then the SAMSOG State Manual 2021 states, “This category (Oceans and Tidewaters) includes bays, estuaries, harbors, marshes, beaches, tidelands and the open sea. This boundary is the high-water mark.” Then the State Manual continues to say “Ownership in tidal areas (beaches, marshes, estuaries, bays, harbors, etc.) extends only to the high water mark, and the State has the right to the foreshore.” 

I’m sure I’m simply misunderstanding, but the Official Code seems to contradict the books. Furthermore, I can’t seem to find anything in the Official Code stating anything about the high water mark as a water boundary? Please excuse my ignorance for not understanding. At the end of the day I’m just a guy trying to learn.

          I would have posted earlier but saw this question only a few days ago.  This is no reflection on anyone new to surveying and preparing to take the surveying exams, but most licensed surveyors around the state, and certainly all those who work along the coast, should readily be able answer Shane's question.  Since this is in the context of preparing to take the surveying exams, before going further please read my Samsog post "Comments about the Surveying Exams", dated October 28, 2017, online at  https://www.samsog.org/forums/Posts.aspx?topic=1391502  To what is stated there, I will add that the questions on the legal part of the surveying exam I took for getting licensed, though not explicitly citing or mentioning the Georgia code, were obviously composed largely on the basis of sections in that code by someone who had no understanding whatsoever of the meaning or purpose of those code sections.

          The rule about public and private ownership, and therefore, boundaries, of lands adjacent to tidewaters is derived from British common law.  The rule is simple enough, but was developed by the British courts in a rather haphazard fashion over several centuries before becoming settled law there and then in most states of the U.S., including Georgia.  Georgia, by statute, later threw a monkey wrench into the situation which, though not complicating the rule itself, makes its practical application a rather perplexing affair.

          England has a number of courts, among them, the admiralty courts.  In the early days of the English legal system, the courts had to devise rules to define the extent of their jurisdictions.  The admiralty courts developed the rule that their jurisdiction extends to all the lands over which the tides ebb and flow.  The other courts developed the rule that their jurisdictions generally extend to the limits of lands above the ebb and flow of the tides.  This became the basis for the distinctions applied in the law for lands above the mean high tide mark and for lands below the mean high tide mark.  Most of the law dealing with the areas over which the tides ebb and flow derive from the decisions of the admiralty courts.  The admiralty courts developed the rule that all tidal waters are classified as navigable, even if a given tidal body of water or tidal stream is, in fact, nonnavigable.  This has important implications regarding boundaries and public and private rights in tidal bodies of water.

          The basic rule that evolved regarding title to lands above the mean high tide mark of tidal waters--that is, uplands along the coast and lands in the interior of the state--is that they presumptively belong to whoever has a deed for the property and is in possession of it.  It is a little more complicated than that, but that is the essence.  This means if the state decided to assert it owns a piece of privately-held land anywhere in Georgia above the mean high tide mark on the basis that the land was never granted, the burden is on the state to prove that the land was never granted.  I know of no situation in which the state has ever made such a claim, much less prevailed, for any land so privately held.  It would be nearly impossible to do so given the fact that the state would have to prove a negative--that is, prove the land was not granted.  This is why, for lands above the mean high tide mark, it is rarely necessary to research the titles back to the grants.  See OCGA § 44-5-14.

          For lands below the mean high tide mark of tidal waters, that is, marshes and beaches, the legal presumption is the opposite--such lands are presumed to be owned by the state.  This means if a private person or entity wants to claim title to a piece of land that is below the mean high tide mark, again, that is marsh or a beach, the burden is on that private person or entity to prove there was a grant and that they derive title from that grant.  If the evidence proffered by the private person or entity is insufficient to show a grant, the state owns it.  This rule was developed in the admiralty courts, and, in its ultimate form, held that all lands covered by "navigable" waters, that is waters where the tides ebb and flow, belong to the sovereign, including tidal bodies of water that are, in fact, nonnavigable.  The purpose was to insure the public right of passage on and use of such waters and to provide unimpeded access and use of them by the sovereign when necessary to thwart foreign invasions.

          Two key terms are "tide" and "presumption".  It is the attribute of the ebb and flow of the tides--not the salinity of the water, or the presence or absence of marsh or aquatic vegetation, or navigability--that determines the relative ownership rights in lands along the coast above and below the mean high water mark.  The rule that lands below the mean high tide mark of tidal waters belong to the state is a presumption.  This means if a private individual or entity can show that a grant was issued for a given parcel of land below the mean high tide mark, and title to that land never revested in the state by a subsequent deed or otherwise, the land is privately owned, subject to some strict limitations as to what the private owner can do with it, and subject to certain uses the public can make of it. 

          So, simply put, the presumptive boundary of privately-owned lands adjacent to tidewater is the mean high tide line.  The following are the definitive Georgia cases:

Jones v. Oemler, 110 Ga. 202, 35 S.E. 375 (1899)

https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.35112103113702&seq=238

Johnson v. State, 114 Ga. 790, 40 S.E. 807 (1901)

https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.35112103113744&seq=830

State of Georgia v. Ashmore, 236 Ga. 401, 224 S.E.2d 334 (1976), certiorari denied 429 U.S. 830, 50 L.Ed.2d 95, 97 S.Ct. 92 (1976)

https://casetext.com/case/state-of-georgia-v-ashmore

          To grow rice, the fields have to be alternately flooded and drained at timely intervals.  In the 18th and 19th centuries the only efficient means for accomplishing this was to locate rice fields in tidal areas and construct elaborate systems of dams, dikes, canals, and floodgates to regulate the tidal flow.  Rice was the most lucrative crop grown in coastal Georgia until the later 1800s.  Grants for thousands of acres of marsh were taken out by private individuals for growing rice, and such grants were freely issued.  In the late 1800s, efficient pumps were developed for use in flooding and draining rice fields.  This made tidal flow no longer a necessity for rice culture, and other factors made it more efficient to grow rice in Louisiana, Arkansas, California, and other places.  As a result, the rice industry moved there and practically died out in the Southeast.

          Oysters were once abundant along the Georgia coast.  Before the 1870s they had to be consumed locally because they spoil quickly so that it was impractical to ship them long distances.  In the 1870s refrigerated rail cars and canning were invented, and that set off an oyster boom.  People along the Georgia coast began taking out grants for marshes for oyster cultivation.  The oyster industry crashed around 1920 as a result of over-harvesting and the resulting depletion of the beds.  Oyster beds require decades to build up to commercial quantities, and the industry has never really recovered in Georgia.

          Georgia's land grant laws were repealed in 1909.  In addition to the thousands of acres of marsh that had been granted under those laws, a few tidal areas were granted into private ownership, both before and after 1909, by specific legislative acts.

          I have been researching titles to lands along the coast back to the grants for years, and have been involved with several suits regarding title to lands below the mean high tide mark.  The majority of lands below the mean high tide mark in Georgia have been granted into private ownership, either by the colonial government, or, later, by the state government.  So, technically, except for regulation and allowed public uses, the mean high tide mark rule does not apply in most situations.

          Now here's the monkey-wrench that was thrown into the Georgia law.  In 1901, in Johnson v. State, cited above, criminal charges were filed against a person for taking oysters from beds that had been planted and maintained in a tidal zone by the upland owner.  The upland owner did not have a grant for the area but claimed title based on the reasons stated in the case.  The charges were dismissed on the grounds that the area where the oysters were taken, under the English common law rule as adopted in Georgia, was state-owned and therefore the upland owner had no private rights to them.  As a result of this ruling, the oyster industry heavily lobbied the legislature and was able to get enacted Georgia Laws, 1902, pages 108-09 (OCGA §§ 44-8-6 to 44-8-8).  In summary, this act quitclaimed title to all the tidal areas of the state to the adjacent upland owners to the center of nonnavigable tidal bodies of water, and to the mean low water mark of navigable tidal bodies of water.  It was hasty and not well-thought-out legislation.  In State of Georgia v. Ashmore, in 1976, a 5-to-2 decision, the Georgia Supreme Court reaffirmed the British Common Law rule and gave the 1902 act such a narrow construction that it is rendered of little practical effect.  The ruling resulted in private property being taken without paying compensation, in violation of the state and federal constitutions.  The courts technically do not have this power, but they do such things occasionally.  The Ashmores attempted to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court on constitutional grounds, but that court refused to hear the matter, stating that it involved the construction of a state statute and the Georgia courts were the ones best equipped to do that.

          In reading State of Georgia v. Ashmore, don't try to make sense of it because it makes no sense.  Simply learn the bottom line rule as stated above that it reaffirmed.

          Since State of Georgia v. Ashmore attorneys, in title certifications and in drawing up deeds and other legal instruments, have generally copied and passed down the descriptions in the deeds that were executed before that decision, but they usually insert a clause that the warranty “does not extend to any rights, title, or interests the state of Georgia has or may have to any lands beyond the mean high tide mark within the described boundaries”; or words to that effect.  There are warranty deeds for areas that are entirely marsh that contain such clauses, so that the effect is the grantor is not warranting title to anything, at least against the state, and the grantee is not receiving anything unless there was a grant for the marsh (which in most cases no one bothers to determine).

          A further complicating factor is that until about the 1970s no one cared or paid much attention to the title status of tidelands in Georgia. Such lands in their natural state were widely regarded as wastelands.  Much of the land beyond the mean high tide mark along the coast has been artificially filled in by humans, and billions of dollars worth of factories, shipping facilities, marinas, homes, and other items have been built on such filled in areas by private individuals and entities, without regard as to whether there is a grant for such areas.  The unofficial policy of the state since the 1970s has generally been not to disturb or contest the validity of such filled-in and built-over areas, but to prevent their extension, and to prevent further filling or disturbance.

          Eleven counties in Georgia have waters that are tidal within or adjacent to their boundaries.  These include the six counties that are directly on the Atlantic Ocean--Chatham, Bryan, Liberty, McIntosh, Glynn, and Camden--and the five counties of Effingham, Long, Wayne, Brantley, and Charlton, that have tidal rivers extending into them.  The general rule that applies in Georgia, minus the 1902 act, also applies in South Carolina and Florida.  It applies in most coastal states, but I have not examined the matter in detail for other states.

          It is essential that surveyors who work along the coast understand the above matters.  So many times surveyors make plats that do not conform to the common law rule and do not conform to the clients' deeds.  It has been my experience that when clients question what the surveyor did, the surveyor is completely ignorant of matters and can offer no explanation.  It then gets further complicated and expensive because the client hires an attorney to find out what is going on.  In some cases law suits have resulted which would have been completely avoided if the surveyor had understood matters to begin with and thereby done his work properly.

          In most cases, what surveyors should do when surveying lands for which a tidewater is involved is follow the boundaries as set forth in the vesting deed for the land being surveyed and the vesting deeds for each adjoining tract.  If the tract consists of both highland and land below the mean high water mark, the surveyor should carefully delineate the mean high water mark and clearly designate and distinguish the land above and below the mean high water mark.  If the entire tract is below the mean high water mark, that should be carefully noted on the plat.

          Pindar's Georgia Real Estate Law and Procedure §§ 6-24 to 6-28 does not do an adequate job of explaining the matter.  The first edition came out in 1971, before  State of Georgia v. Ashmore, and emphasizes the 1902 act and its effects.  The second edition came out in 1979, after State of Georgia v. Ashmore.  Pindar should have rewritten the entirety of §§ 6-24 to 6-28 to reflect the findings of that decision.  Instead, he added a few sentences in the text and attempted to explain the matter in the footnotes.  This has been copied in the succeeding five editions,

          The additional question remains of how to practically determine the mean high water mark.  Smith v. State of Georgia, 248 Ga. 154, 282 S.E.2d 76, 24 A.L.R.4th 282 (1981), online at  https://law.justia.com/cases/georgia/supreme-court/1981/37291-1.html, definitively explains how the mean high tide mark of tidal waters is technically determined.  After describing the science involved, the court held "We adopt the definition of mean high tide or water given by the U. S. Coast and Geodetic Survey and hold that the mean high water at any given point along the coast is the elevation of the mean level of high water calculated by averaging the height of all the high waters at that place over a period of 19 years [the 18.6-year tidal cycle].  We further hold that the mean high water mark is to be determined by projecting the tidal plane of the mean high water to the point of its intersection with the shore."

          Besides the cases cited in Smith v. State of Georgia, other cases that set forth the method for determining the mean high water mark in somewhat less detail are: United States v. Lewis, 355 F.Supp. 1132 (S.D. Ga. 1973), a Georgia case online at https://casetext.com/case/united-states-v-lewis-71 , and Attorney General v. Chambers, 4 DeGex. Macnaghten & Gordon 206, 43 English Reports 486 (Ch. 1854), online at https://archive.org/details/englishreports43rent/page/486/mode/2up .  Attorney General v. Chambers describes the reasoning for adopting the mean high tide level rather than any of the other defined tidal levels.

          The precise location of the mean high water mark is, of course, unstable and changes, sometimes slightly, sometimes drastically, with each incoming tide.  Surveyors, the designated DNR representative, or the private consultant, generally delineate the mean high water mark (usually referred to informally as the "Salt Marsh Jurisdiction Line" in the regulations) by simple visual observation, using mainly the vegetation as the guide.  The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration maintains tidal gauges all up and down the coast that continually measure and record the tide levels.  To determine the mean high water elevation in a more scientifically precise way than simple observation, go to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration / National Ocean Service / Center for Operational Oceanographic Products and Services web site.  It is explained at https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/products.html  Generally, one takes the average of the high water elevation readings from the tables of the tidal gauges on each side of the area of interest over the previous 18.6 years and interpolates between them.

          A method for determining the elevation of the mean high water mark at a given locality by making direct observations over a period of several days is described in Phillip Kissam, Surveying for Civil Engineers, 2d edition, New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1981, pages 500-03.  The results this method yields should be very close to that obtained by using the average of the tides over the 18.6-year cycle as described in Smith v. State of Georgia.

          As the above makes clear, the law dealing with the ownership and rights in tidal areas cannot very well be understood without a knowledge of the history of its evolution.  The best overview of the development of the English, and later the American, law, is pages 545 to the end in:

MacGrady, Glenn J. "The Navigability Concept in the Civil and Common Law: Historical Development, Current Importance, and Some Doctrines That Don't Hold Water." Florida State University Law Review 3, no. 4 (Fall 1975): 513-615, online at https://ir.law.fsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1801&context=lr

          This book describes the history of the development of the law in England up to the time of its publication in exquisite detail:

Moore, Stuart Archibald. A History of the Foreshore and the Law Relating Thereto. With a Hitherto Unpublished Treatise by Lord Hale, Lord Hale's "De Jure Maris," and Hall's Essay on the Rights of the Crown in the Sea-shore, Third Edition. With Notes, and an Appendix Relating to Fisheries. London: Stevens & Haynes, 1888. Reprint. Clark, N.J.: Lawbook Exchange, 2006.

          Moore was an English barrister who matriculated at the Inner Temple, one of the four Inns of Court.  He specialized in litigation over issues relating to marshes, beaches, and the high seas.  The Inner Temple Library has his law papers, and the notes he compiled in writing the above book.  They consist of tens of thousands of pages.  The Inner Temple Library is adjacent to King’s Bench Walk in London.

          State law allows private persons and entities who own land adjacent to tidelands a license to erect and maintain private and commercial docks across marshes and beaches.  This applies whether the marshes or beaches are owned by the state or are owned by the person or entity desiring to erect a dock.  To erect such a dock, one must obtain a revocable permit from the Coastal Marshlands Protection Committee of the Department of Natural Resources.  The permit grants the person or entity a license to erect and maintain the dock.  Surveyors who work along the coast will sometimes be called on to process dock permits and therefore need to be familiar with the dock permitting process.

          The criteria and permit form can be found on the Coastal Resources Division of the Georgia Department of Natural Resources web site https://coastalgadnr.org/.  The regulations for dock permits can be found in the Coastal Marshlands Protection Act, OCGA §§ 12-5-280 to 12-5-297.  Many older docks that were built before the permitting process began are grandfathered in and exist and are maintained by their owners without a formal permit from the state.  If a dock, whether permitted or grandfathered in, ceases to be maintained so that it falls into considerable disrepair, a new permit must be obtained to repair or rebuild it.

          When a dock permit is granted, DNR officials define a dock corridor within which the dock must be built.  The boundaries of the dock corridor are often based on the principle of equitable apportionment.  Equitable apportionment is designed to give each landowner along a given body of tidewater a proportionate amount of frontage along the line of navigability of the body of water.  See Dorroh v. McCarthy, 265 Ga. 750, 462 S.E.2d 708 (1995), online at https://casetext.com/case/dorroh-v-mccarthy, and Opinions of the Attorney General of Georgia, Opinion No. 93-25 (1993), the latter of which I do not find online. 

          As a word of practical advice, when subdividing and developing lands adjacent to tidewaters, surveyors should get the DNR involved with the developer from the start and define the dock corridors and rights for each lot beforehand, rather than waiting until the lots are sold so that it is then left to the later lot owners to deal with and squabble over dock locations and other rights, if any, they may have in the tidal areas adjacent to their lots.  Clearly defining such rights beforehand can avoid future problems and controversies such as that that arose in Dorroh v. McCarthy.

          An additional topic surveyors should be familiar with is the Public Trust Doctrine.  It has important implications for the development or restricting the development of tidal and immediately adjacent areas.  The Public Trust Doctrine applies to all lands, not just tidelands, but it has achieved most of its prominence with regard to tidal areas.  The doctrine, at present, is poorly developed in Georgia.

          The Public Trust Doctrine originated with the rule developed by the admiralty courts that the beds of all tidal waters were owned by the king in his sovereign capacity, and, though he could convey such lands into private ownership, he retained certain rights in those areas in trust for the public that he could neither relinquish into private ownership or deny to the public.

          The modern Public Trust Doctrine is the legal concept that certain resources are held by the government in trust for the people generally, and cannot be alienated away.  There is no codification, as such, of the Public Trust Doctrine.  It exists scattered in court decisions and statutes, and it evolves over time.  Historically, the rights of the public in tidewaters, based on the Public Trust Doctrine, were directly related to navigation, commerce, and fishing.  Other public uses, such as recreation, were also made of tidal waters, but these uses were passive and rarely contested so that, in the early days, little law was developed regarding them.  As society and technology have evolved, and with increasing population, the public’s use of trust lands and waters have changed and have been somewhat enlarged.  Today the public rights in tidewaters that are protected under the Public Trust Doctrine include the right of commercial navigation, fishing, swimming, boating, access, environmental protection, and scenic beauty.  These rights exist in all tidewaters, whether the given tidewater is factually navigable or factually nonnavigable, or whether it is state-owned or privately-owned.

          There are hundreds of cases, articles, and books about the Public Trust Doctrine.  The most comprehensive general explanation with regard to tidal areas that I know of is:

Slade, David C.; R. Kerry Kehoe; and Jane K. Stahl; eds. Putting the Public Trust Doctrine to Work. The Application of the Public Trust Doctrine to the Management of Lands, Waters and Living Resources of the Coastal States, June, 1997. 2d edition. Washington, D.C.: Coastal States Organization, 1997.

          The following statutory and case authorities express elements of the Public Trust Doctrine as it exists in Georgia with regard to tidewaters:

OCGA § 27-4-2;

OCGA § 44-8-8;

OCGA § 52-1-2;

OCGA § 52-1-3(4);

Charleston & Savannah Railway v. Johnson, 73 Ga. 306 (1884) https://cite.case.law/ga/73/306/ ;

West v. Baumgartner, 124 Ga.App. 318, 184 S.E.2d 213 (1971), certiorari to Supreme Court 228 Ga. 671, 187 S.E.2d 665 (1972)

https://casetext.com/case/west-v-baumgartner-1  and  https://cite.case.law/ga/228/671/

          Privately-owned and publicly-owned marsh are protected under the Public Trust Doctrine, the Coastal Marshlands Protection Act, and federal regulations.  Except for the construction of private docks, marinas, and other water-related structures, and restoration, under a state permit and in conformity with state and federal regulations, privately-owned marshes can no longer be disturbed.  Private individuals and entities who own the fee simple title to lands in Georgia beyond the mean high tide mark of tidal waters on the basis of grants for those lands, can legally do four things with the land:

1. They have the exclusive right to plant, cultivate, and harvest oysters, clams, and other shellfish in them.  This is under the ruling in State of Georgia v. Ashmore.  The private owners DO NOT have the right to exclude the public from fishing for other species in the tidal waters they own; nor to exclude the public generally from such areas.  See West v. Baumgartner, cited above.  Under the current economic situation, the right to plant, cultivate, and harvest oysters, clams, and other shellfish is not much of a benefit because the financial return is minimal to nil, so few take advantage of it;

2. They can, under a permit issued by the Coastal Marshlands Protection Committee and in conformity with strict state and federal standards, erect private docks; and they can erect commercial docks, commercial marinas, and structures or facilities, provided the structures or facilities are water-related and/or that they are of public or quasi-public utility.  This right also exists for upland owners who own land adjacent to state-owned marshes, and therefore is not really tied to private ownership of marsh;

3. They can enjoin others from erecting permanent structures, such as private docks, commercial docks, commercial marinas, or bridges on the marsh they own;

and

4. They can restore the land to its more or less natural state, in accordance with state and federal guidelines, and sell mitigation credits.

          I would be interested in hearing comments from surveyors about experiences they have had with determining boundaries and other rights in tidewaters.

          My degree is Forest Resources from the University of Georgia.  I have never attended law school.  Part of what I had at the University of Georgia was a course in undergraduate business law and a course in undergraduate Forest Law.  Both were taught by attorneys.  The Forest Law course was mostly real property law.  Understanding law is not a matter of reading statutes or code sections.  Understanding law and the legal aspects of surveying is knowing and understanding a wide variety of cases because most law is judge-made through cases that involve problems in real life situations, and it is an evolutionary process in that as new problems arise, judges invent new law but always (at least in theory) based on analogy to what has gone on before.  In Anglo-American law the records of cases go back to the 1200s.  Look at any legal treatise on substantive law and about all you see cited there are cases.  A very small portion of the business law course I took was on the Uniform Commercial Code, and we went over the Statute of Frauds very generally.  Everything else was cases.  The Forest Law course was nothing but cases.  The Georgia code was not mentioned at all except to the extent that it was cited in the cases we read.

          I'm going to be blunt.  A person is not qualified to survey land until, among other things, they have read and understood several hundred real property law cases.  Yet, how many licensed surveyors meet this qualification?  I can't count the number of times I have been called as a consultant by attorneys and their clients to help resolve situations in which a licensed surveyor, out of ignorance and incompetence, messed up a property boundary and everyone in the conference room--the attorneys, their paralegals, and the property owners--understood the situation perfectly but the licensed surveyor had not a clue.  And the attorneys, property owners, and paralegals had never done any surveying.  Not only did the licensed surveyor have no understanding of what was going on, he could give no coherent explanation of why he came up with what he did.

          Law constitutes an integral whole and cannot be understood by reading statutes or cases in isolation.  One has to read and understand dozens of cases, and a few statutes, to begin to get the hang of matters.  Of course, law is such a vast field that no one person can master anywhere near the whole thing, but professionals should have a working knowledge of the areas of law that are applicable to their professions.  Surveyors necessarily have to have a deep understanding boundary law, and, more generally, a knowledge of real property law.

          My post dated 10/28/2017 https://www.samsog.org/forums/Posts.aspx?topic=1391502   describes how the  business law and Forest Law courses I took in college were conducted.  One of the things we were taught was how to do legal research.  We were required to choose legal topics to write papers on.  In doing this, we were required to go to the law library and do the research from actual case reports.  When the professor graded our papers, the first thing he did was read through them to find any legal propositions stated for which no authority was cited--which he marked through.  The papers were then graded as if the marked-through statements did not appear at all.  In other words, we could not just make up law out of thin air, even if it was "correct" law.  We had to cite the sources.  The process forced one to really bear down, do the research, and make sure every proposition stated was backed by an adequate and accurate authority.

          The idea about teaching us how to do legal research, in addition to teaching the law itself, was that when we went out into the real world we would encounter situations that we had not learned how to deal with in college, and we would thus know how to look up and understand the particular law applicable to those situations.

          I conducted an online surveying law course through Middle Georgia State University for six years.  Because it was online, it could not be conducted with sufficient rigor.  It was not possible for me to meet with the students in a law library to demonstrate to them how to do legal research, and most of the students did not have access to an adequate law library.  It was not practical to have adequate class discussions of points of law.  I did the best I could, but it was severely limited.

          The exams for the business law and Forest Law courses I took in college were all essay, and we had two hours to do them.  The "legal" part of the state surveying exam I took more than thirty years ago to get licensed was all multiple-choice and so was totally inadequate for testing one's knowledge of the legal aspects of surveying, other than, perhaps, the Board rules and technical standards for surveys.  (This, incidentally, is why the four-year degree requirement is needed to become a licensed surveyor--persons aspiring to be surveyors would pretty much learn in college what cannot very well be tested on by the State Board exams).

          Mr. Rousey, I can see how, by reading the Georgia code sections in isolation, you might be confused by what they say about boundaries along tidewaters.  You are too hung up on that single statute.  The disposition of the matter is the meaning the courts put on those code sections--in this case, State of Georgia v. Ashmore.  No one has contested State of Georgia v. Ashmore since it came out, and it is unlikely anyone will contest it.  All attorneys who deal with land titles along the coast recognize the results of that decision in their work.  I have applied it dozens of times in my work.  At this point you should simply memorize what that case decided, and ignore the code sections. With regard to the statement "It sounds like you are saying the boundary is the mean high water mark...", the presumptive boundary is the mean high water mark.  The colonial and state governments granted thousands of acres of land beyond the mean high water mark into private ownership.  In such cases, private individuals can own highland and the adjacent land beyond the mean high water mark, and can own land beyond the mean high water mark without any highland involved.