Nevada v. United States et al. (463 U.S. 110)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided June 24, 1983 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 463 U.S. 110 · 103 S. Ct. 2906
- Decided
- June 24, 1983
- Term
- October Term 1982
- Vote
- 9–0
- Majority author
- Justice Rehnquist
- Issue area
- Economic Activity
- Disposition
- Affirmed and reversed (or vacated) in part
- Outcome
- Petitioning party won
- Ideological direction
- Conservative
Opinion excerpt
Justice Rehnquist delivered the opinion of the Court. In 1913 the United States sued to adjudicate water rights to the Truckee River for the benefit of the Pyramid Lake Indian Reservation and the planned Newlands Reclamation Project. Thirty-one years later, in 1944, the United States District Court for the District of Nevada entered a final decree in the case pursuant to a settlement agreement. In 1973 the United States filed the present action in the same court on behalf of the Pyramid Lake Indian Reservation, seeking additional water rights to the Truckee River. The issue thus presented is whether the Government may partially undo the 1944 decree, or whether principles of res judicata prevent it, and the intervenor Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe, from litigating this claim on the merits. I Nevada has, on the average, less precipitation than any other State in the Union. Except for drainage in the southeastern part of the State into the Colorado River, and drainage in the northern part of the State into the Columbia River, the rivers that flow in Nevada generally disappear into “sinks.” Department of Agriculture Yearbook, Climate and Man (1941). The present litigation relates to water rights in the Truckee River, one of the three principal rivers flowing through west central Nevada. It rises in the High Sierra in Placer County, Cal., flows into and out of Lake Tahoe, and thence…
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