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Show The ditch company contended* and the State Supreme Court took the posi- tion* thajb the entry of a decree in a water-adjudication proceeding by a Colorado Court vested.in the claimant a property right which could be taken away only after an action in Court with the payment of just compensation therefor. The United States Supreme Court held that no property of the ditch company had been taken, and no vested right had been violated. Hr. Justice Brandeis saids "As Colorado possessed the right only to an equitable share of the water in the stream, the decree of January 12, 1898, in the Colorado water pro- oeeding did not award to the ditch company any ri^ht greater than the equitable share* Hence the apportionment made by the compact cannot have taken from the ditch oosuprny any vested right unless there was in "bhe proceedings leading up to the compact or in its application some vitiating infirmity. No such infirmity or illegality has been shown,. rt In answer to the charge that rotation constituted a taking of a vested rir-ht,, the water-administrative officials asserted that, in time of scarcity when evaporation and transportation losses are heavy, greater benefits at- tend the diversion of a larger body of water over a given period than the di- version of half the quantity over twice that period* On this proposition, the U» S* Supreme Court held that the delegation to the State engineers of the authority to determine when the water should be rotated was a matter of detail clearly within the constitutional power. The Supreme Court re-announced the doctrine that no State may divert all the water of a stream without regard to the injury or prejudice it may work upon the down-stream State. It said also that the compact adapts the age-old treaty-making powor of independent sovereign nations to the union of sovereign States, and although the equitable rights of the States might have been determined in an original suit in that Court, the result of the exercise of the compacting power, is equally effective. TIis Supreme Court held that a division of the water of a stream, whether by compact with the consent of Congress> or by decree of the Supreme Court, is binding upon the citizens of each State* This part of the decision was based upon a number of early decisions in which questions arose over the location of the boundaries between the original States and had been settled by compacts or boundary conventions. Thereafter, when private parties claim- ed titie to the same land under patents from different States, the Supreme Court upheld the boundary conventions and said that the title claimed under a patent from a.. State which had no title failed because of an intrinsic de- fect in the title of the State, An. interesting side-light on the legal phases of the question arose from the fa&t that the water officials had claimed that the Compact, when con- sented to by an Act of Congress, became a Federal statute, and that under Sec- tion 2^7 (a) of the Judicial Code they had the right to take the case to the Supreme Court on appeal. The U. S. Supreme Court denied this claim and dis- missed the appeal, but held that the injunction from administering the Com- pact denied an important claim under the Constitution which may be reviewed -110- |
