In the case of United States v. State of Maine et al., 1995, the U.S. Supreme Court was tasked with resolving a dispute over boundaries in the Gulf of Maine between Canada and the United States. The boundary issue had been previously addressed by an international court in 1984 but disagreements persisted about its interpretation and implementation, particularly around Georges Bank, a rich fishing ground off New England's coast. In this case, Massachusetts and other states argued that they should have jurisdiction over some areas claimed by federal government under Submerged Lands Act (SLA). However, the Supreme Court ruled against them stating that SLA did not grant coastal states any rights beyond three geographical miles from their coastline into federally controlled waters for purposes such as fishing or oil drilling activities.

The dissenting opinion in the case of United States v. State of Maine et al., 1995, argued that the majority's decision to uphold a federal law prohibiting states from imposing term limits on their congressional representatives was incorrect. The dissenters believed that this ruling violated principles of federalism and state sovereignty by denying states the power to determine how they would be represented in Congress. They contended that nothing in the Constitution expressly forbids states from setting term limits for their own representatives, and thus such decisions should fall within each state's purview under the Tenth Amendment, which reserves all powers not explicitly granted to the federal government for individual states or people. Furthermore, they asserted that allowing voters to decide whether or not to impose term limits is more democratic than having such matters decided by courts.