The Supreme Court agreed on June 21 to hear New York’s lawsuit seeking to prevent New Jersey from unilaterally withdrawing from the interstate compact that created the Waterfront Commission of New York Harbor to combat corruption.
The storied Port of New York and New Jersey’s reckoning with organized crime was immortalized in director Elia Kazan’s 1954 film, “On the Waterfront,” a winner of eight Academy Awards that starred Marlon Brando.
But organized crime was driven out years ago and critics have long accused the commission of over-regulating businesses involved in the port and causing labor shortages.
New Jersey also claims it no longer benefits from the existence of the commission because when the compact was created in 1953 most of the economic activity in the port was on the New York side, but nowadays more than 90 percent of the activity is on the New Jersey side….