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The United States inherited the British common law system which develops legal principles through judicial decisions made in the context of disputes between parties. . Statutory and constitutional law forms the framework within which these disputes are resolved, to some extent, but decisional law developed through the resolution of specific disputes is the great engine of w
Winters v. United States, 207 U.S. 564 (1908), was a United States Supreme Court case clarifying water rights of American Indian reservations. [1] This doctrine was meant to clearly define the water rights of indigenous people in cases where the rights were not clear. [2]
Where water is more scarce (like in the Western United States), allocation of flowing water is premised upon prior appropriation. "The appropriation doctrine confers upon one who actually diverts and uses water the right to continue to do so provided that the water is used for reasonable and beneficial uses", regardless of whether that person ...
The McCarran Amendment, 43 U.S.C. § 666 (1952) is a federal law enacted by the United States Congress in 1952 which waives the United States' sovereign immunity in suits concerning ownership or management of water rights. It amended Chapter 15 (Appropriation of Waters; Reservoir Sites) of Title 43 (Public Lands) of the United States Code.
The states involved in the case, meanwhile, argue the Navajo Nation is attempting to make an end run around a Supreme Court decree that divvied up water in the Colorado River’s Lower Basin.
Water is very scarce in the West and so must be allocated sparingly, based on the productivity of its use. The prior appropriation doctrine developed in the Western United States from Spanish (and later Mexican) civil law and differs from the riparian water rights that apply in the rest of the United States.
“(The United States) is going to have to take some sort of action to get a handle on groundwater over-pumping,” said Burke Griggs, a professor of water law at Washburn University in Topeka ...
The Colorado River supplies water to more than 40 million people, as well as hundreds of thousands of acres of farmland as it traverses through seven states before reaching the U.S.–Mexico border.