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Show -92- concern towards pennitting any legalistic property claims to interfere with the problems of population or the freedom of experiments denied relief in both oasesa without prejudice to further recourse if the facts proved con- trary to the Court's estimate of the consequences. These opinions are sane, cautious and awake to the shifting economic scenery of our day* North Dakota vs. Minnesota and South Dakota vs. Minnesota (Consol, 256 Uo S« 230; 1919) consider flood dangers on Lake Traverse, deny an injunction against the defendant state, and in a mood of conciliation ask the parties to work out a joint plan of protection. Tennessee vs. Arkansas (2l|9 TJ* S. 588) somewhat curtly denies Tennessee the right to ca plain against the defend- ant's levee work on the Mississippi River, which threatens to flood the complainant! s bank., holding apparently that common law liabilities for flooding must give way before the common impulse to ward off the annual threat and improve on nature. The ree.der is curious to know why the great tribunal dismisses the complaint of a commonwealth without even writing an opinion, disposing of Tennessee as casually as it would you or me. The principle of the decision is obviously framed on the same broad scale as the sewage cases. We are reduced to the two irrigation cases in which Colorado lias been defendant, and which., if they had arrived at any applicable set of princi- ples;, would seem, in spite of our long review, to settle our interstate water problem in themselves* One of them is a great case, standing shoulder high in the throng of lesser decisions in this and other fields of juris- prudence, but which unfortunately seems to have settled nothing- The other reaches a conclusion* after a long struggle. The result seems inevitable* and it is certainly decisive, but the conclusion seems to the writer a comple-te departure from the argument* That argument seems to me and to hosts of students who have studied the opinion, to commit the court to a narrow and professional position on a very broad problem* which is much inferior to its usual wide vision and from which it must certainly depart. Kansasjrs, Colorado (185 U. S. 208; 206 U. S. h6; 1901, 1907) found the Arkansas River depleted by Colorado irrigation. Kansas, whose.some- what lesser irrigation in the western counties was sufferings claimed all the river on riparian principles. Colorado countered with various de- fense ss but among others, claimed that as the* sovereign in whose domain all the water concerned originated* she was entitled to exhaust it« The court, finding depletion and injury, waives aside the stiff legal doctrine suggested by both, parties, and says the conflicting sovereignties, each asserting entire control, must come to some equitable adjustment of their claimsa and finally holds that while Colorado*s claims to exclusive pro- perty in the waters must be limited, that in view of the needs and condi- tions of both states, on the river and elsewheres she has not exceeded as yet the equitable limitations to the assertion of her sovereignty. With due respect to abler opinions, perhaps, this case is sometimes misinter- preted*. It does not announce any principle of "equitable division" or "equitable apportionment" of the waters of a river* It does say there must be an equitable limit to conflicting sovereignties.? a fair adjustment of their otherwise complete and entire right of assertion, and an appor- tionment, not of water, but of natural benefits. This doctrine may not result in any division of water at all. but, in view of the general position |