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Show 364 SUMMARIES OF THE STATE WATER RIGHTS SYSTEMS Several years later the supreme court was asked to reexamine the foregoing doctrine expounded in the Farmers' Irrigation District case on the ground that it was entirely erroneous and based upon a misconception of the State Board's powers and duties.167 In undertaking such review, the court stressed the importance of a thorough consideration of this and related questions- important not only to the parties actually before the court, but to every owner of irrigated land in the State. If the challenge of the Board's authority to adjudicate priorities of appropriation under the 1895 act were upheld, then more than a thousand adjudications of prior claims made by the Board since the time of its first organization-a period of more than 16 years-would be absolutely void. So the propositions were again considered at length and in detail, and the conclusions reached in Crawford Company v. Hathaway as to constitutionality, scope of administrative power with respect to adjudications of preexisting appropriations, and finality of the administrative determinations unless appealed to the courts, were unequivocally approved. Establishment of these fundamental principles was apparently taken for granted.168 It is true that in several later court opinions there appeared some unnecessary statements which, taken literally and out of context, might be misconstrued.169 However, these errors undoubtedly were simply a result of careless phraseology; for the supreme court's considered statements, over the years, with respect to the Department's statutory power to make original adjudication of water rights have evinced unqualified judicial approval.170 161Enterprise In. Dist. v. Tri-State Land Co., 92 Nebr. 121, 139-151, 138 N.W. 171 (1912). In Kearney Water & Elec. Powers Co. v. Alfalfa In. Dist., 97 Nebr. 139, 145-146, 149 N.W. 363 (1914), the supreme court said, "Under the statute of 1895 any appropriator might have his claim adjudicated by the state board. In such a proceeding all appropriators in the same water division should be made parties. No appropriator who has neglected to have his claim adjudicated, or has failed to make other appropriators in the same water division parties thereto, can obtain any rights as against other appropriators whose rights have not been so adjudicated." 168Compare Kearney Water & Elec. Powers Co. v. Alfalfa In. Dist., 97 Nebr. 139, 145-146, 149 N.W. 363 (1914). 169 "The quasi-judicial powers conferred upon the department [of water resources] have application only to the granting and cancellation of appropriation rights and priorities." [Emphasis supplied.] State ex rel. Cary v. Cochran, 138 Nebr. 163, 168-169, 292 N.W. 239 (1940). This statement was repeated in opinions in several later cases, in none of which was the Department's statutory authority to adjudicate existing appropriative rights in issue. In Plunkett v. Parsons, 143 Nebr. 535, 540-541, 10 N.W. (2d) 469 (1943), the court not only repeated the statement, but went on to say that the legislative grant of jurisdiction does not include the power to adjudicate vested rights, which in this case were rights that accrued prior to enactment of the 1895 law; yet the issue here was, not whether the Department might make an original adjudication of such rights, but whether it had power to make a further adjudication of rights already lawfulry and finally adjudicated. 110 The Department has no power to make a further adjudication of a right already lawfully and finally adjudicated. Plunkett v. Parsons, 143 Nebr. 535, 540-541, 10 N.W. (2d) 469 (1943). But it is well settled by decisions of the supreme court that the |