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Show -16- affecting the public interest," the constitutionality of which is drawn in question on the a'ppeal. The Attorney General and Acting Solicitor General Bell also filed a memorandum suggesting the interest of the United States in interstate water compacts and interstate compacts generally. Messrs. Percy Warren Green, Attorney General of Delaware, Herbert R. 01Conor, Attorney General of Maryland, David Wilentz, Attorney General of New Jersey, John J. Bennett, Jr. Attorney General, Henry Epstein, Solicitor General, of New York, Julius Henry Cohen, T. Harry Rowland, Adrian Bonnelly, Austin T» Tobin, and Daniel B. Goldberg, appearing as amici curiae, by leave of Court, filed on behalf of their respective States and certain state agencies a memorandum taking issue with the views of the Attorney General of the United States as expressed in the first *of his memoranda above men- tioned. Mr. Abram P. Staples, Attorney General of Virginia, appearing by leave of Court as amicus curiae, joined with the other States in this matter. Opinion of the Court. Mr. Justice Brandeis delivered the opinion of the Court. The La Plata River and Cherry Creek Ditch Company, a Colorado corpo- ration, owns a ditch by which it diverts from that river in Colorado water for irrigation. On July 5, 1928, it brought in the District Court for La Plata County a suit which charged that since June 2hs 1928, the defendants, Hinderlider, State Engineer of Colorado, and his subordinates have so ad- ministered the water of the river as to deprive the plaintiff of water which it claims the. right to divert. A mandatory injunction was sought. The defendants admit that in administering the water of the stream during the period named they shut the headgate of the Ditch Company so as to deprive it of water for purposes of irrigation} but assert that they did so pursuant to the requirements of the La Plata River Compact entered into by the States of Colorado and New Mexico with the consent of the Congress of the United States. The Compact provides that, each State shall receive a definite share of water under the varying conditions which obtain during the year, and, among other things :^ 1 ' The Compact had its inception in ,1921 when the legislature of each state authorized the appointment of a commissioner who shall represent the State "upon a Joint Commission . . . to be constituted by said states for the purpose of negotiating and entering into a compact or agreement be- tween said states, with the consent of Congress, respecting the future utilization and disposition of the waters of the La Plata River, and all streams tr-ibutary thereto, and fixing and determining the rights of each of said states to the use, benefit and disposition of the waters of said stream, pr-ovided, however, that any compact or agreement so entered into |