Here ’s a deceptive dubiousness : Is Long Island an island ? It ’s palisade on all side by water , yet for legal aim , it is n’t an island . In1985 , all nine DoJ on the Supreme Court accord . Long Island , that mass of land totally surrounded by weewee , is not an island . It ’s a peninsula . One that just happens to have a little water between it and the mainland .
The caseful in question , United States v. Maine , uprise over dispute between province and the federal government over who lawfully controls the water between the eastern tip of Long Island and Rhode Island ( Block Island Sound ) .
If Long Island were de jure an island , that water supply would be considered the unfastened sea , and therefore be regulated by the Union regime . As a peninsula , the water around it ( and the filth at the bottom of the sound ) comes under the office of the state of matter surrounding it .
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Thanks to the Supreme Court ’s geographically bad ruling , the island is an extension of the New York mainland , and ships passing through the bay to its compass north necessitate a state - licensed police captain , per New York and Rhode Island law . Here ’s the Supreme Court ’s logical system on why the island is not an island , according to the Long Island - based newspaperNewsday :
Technically , the East River , the trunk of water that separates Long Island from Manhattan and the Bronx ( on the New York mainland ) , is atidal strait , rather than a river . Since the East River is relatively shallow , difficult for ships to voyage , and not an vent to the ocean , it does n’t depend , the Court essentially contend . Newsdaypoints out that scientific expert do n’t defend this statement — geologically , the two islands are made of very unlike sort of rock that formed at trillion of years apart . But , as a matter of political expediency , it ’s more convenient for Long Island to be a peninsula so New York can exert jurisdiction over it ( and reap whatever born imagination it can from that ) .
While it may have simplify interstate squabbles , the demotion to peninsula position did cause Long Island tolose outon its designation as the longest island in the lower 48 province .
