State of Nebraska v. States of Wyoming and Colorado (515 U.S. 1)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided May 30, 1995 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 515 U.S. 1 · 115 S. Ct. 1933
- Decided
- May 30, 1995
- Term
- October Term 1994
- Vote
- 8–1
- Majority author
- Justice Souter
- Issue area
- Interstate Relations
- Outcome
- Petitioning party lost
- Ideological direction
- Unspecifiable
Opinion excerpt
Justice Souter delivered the opinion of the Court. Since 1945, a decree of this Court has rationed the North Platte River among users in Wyoming, Nebraska, and Colorado. By petition in 1986, Nebraska again brought the matter before us, and we appointed a Special Master to conduct the appropriate proceedings. In his Third Interim Report on Motions to Amend Pleadings (Sept. 9, 1994) (hereinafter Third Interim Report), the Master has made recommendations for rulings on requests for leave to amend filed by Nebraska and Wyoming. We now have before us the parties’ exceptions to the Master’s report, each of which we overrule. HH The North Platte River is a nonnavigable stream rising m northern Colorado and flowing through Wyoming into Nebraska, where it joins with the South Platte to form the Platte River. In 1934, Nebraska invoked our original jurisdiction under the Constitution, Art. Ill, §2, cl. 2, by suing Wyoming for an equitable apportionment of the North Platte. The United States had leave to intervene, Colorado was impleaded as a defendant, and the ensuing litigation culminated in the decision and decree in Nebraska v. Wyoming, 325 U. S. 589 (1945) (Nebraska I). We concluded that the doctrine of prior appropriation should serve as the general “guiding principle” in our allocation of the North Platte’s flows, id., at 618, but resisted an inflexible application of that…
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