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Show VI FOREWORD decision to 1901. Both are evidence of the crowding claims being made upon our streams and the end of a period when each State could deter- mine for itself, without regard to its sister States, what and how much use it would make of interstate waters. Interstate litigation and inter- state compacts reflect, in essence, two different approaches-one that is usually a contentious approach, the other a cooperative approach-to the same problem. But either may give way to the other, witness on the one hand the resolution of the Rio Grande litigation noted at page 290 of this volume by the adoption of a compact and the amendment of the decree in the North Platte case by amicable means as noted on page 774 and, on the other hand, the outgrowth of litigation (as in the case of the current Rio Grande dispute) from a compact which, at least in part, bears upon but fails to solve clearly a pressing need for water. The Supreme Court has on occasion urged upon disputants the merits of seeking to solve their differences by agreement. For instance, in Colorado v. Kansas, 320 U.S. 383,392 (1943), it said: The reason for judicial caution in adjudicating the relative rights of States in such cases is that, while we have jurisdiction of such disputes, they involve the interests of quasi-sovereigns, present complicated and delicate questions, and due to the possibility of future change of conditions, necessitate expert adminis- tration rather than judicial imposition of a hard and fast rule. Such con- troversies may appropriately be composed by negotiation and agreement, pur- suant to the compact clause of the Federal Constitution. We say of this case, as the court has said of interstate differences of like nature, that such mutual accommodation and agreement should, if possible, be the medium of settlement, instead of invocation of our adjudieatory power. Students of this volume will find in it raw material which, though it will necessarily have to be supplemented by a knowledge of actual operating experience under compacts, treaties, and decrees, will aid them in assessing the relative merits of the two approaches and in determining the extent to which the compacts that are now on the books have succeeded or failed in solving the "complicated and deli- cate questions," in anticipating "the possibility of future change of conditions," and in providing the "expert administration" of which the Court spoke and the extent to which the judicial decrees that are in force have achieved or failed to achieve the same ends. For these three ideals-a satisfactory solution of complicated and delicate ques- tions, a full realization of the possibility of future changes, and pro- vision for expert administration-are inevitably involved in any long- run solution, judicial or nonjudicial, to problems growing out of the use of common sources of water in a dynamic, growing, changing^ economy. |