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Show 522 INTERSTATE ADJUDICATIONS between private parties. This grows out of the history of the crea- tion of the power, in that it was conferred by the Constitution as a substitute for the diplomatic settlement of controversies between sovereigns and a possible resort to force. The jurisdiction is there- fore limited generally to disputes which, between States entirely in- dependent, might be properly the subject of diplomatic adjustment. They must be suits "by a State for an injury to it in its capacity of quasi-sovereign. In that capacity the State has an interest inde- pendent of and behind the titles of its citizens, in all the earth and air within its domain." "When the States by their union made the forcible abatement of outside nuisances impossible to each, they did not thereby agree to submit to whatever might be done. They did not renounce the possibility of making reasonable demands on the ground of their still remaining quasi-sovereign interests; and the alternative to force is a suit in this court." Georgia v. Tennessee Copper Co., 206 U.S. 230, 237. [The Court's summary of precedents, nearly all of which are contained in this volume, is omitted.] It needs no argument, in the light of these authorities, to reach the conclusion that, where one State, by a change in its method of draining water from lands within its border, increases the flow into an interstate stream, so that its natural capacity is greatly exceeded and the water is thrown upon the farms of another State, the latter State has such an interest as quasi-sovereign in the comfort, health, and prosperity of its farm owners that resort may be had to this Court for relief. It is the creation of a public nuisance of simple type for which a State may properly ask an injunction. In such action by one State against another, the burden on the complainant State of sustaining the allegations of its complaint is much greater than that imposed upon a complainant in an ordinary suit between private parties. "Before this court can be moved to exercise its extraordinary power under the Constitution to control the conduct of one State at the suit of another, the threatened invasion of rights must be of serious magnitude and it must be established by clear and convincing evidence." New York v. New Jersey, 256 U.S. 296,309; MissouHy. Illinois, 200 U.S. 496,521. North Dakota, in addition to an injunction, seeks a decree against Minnesota for damages of $5,000 for itself and of a million dollars for its inhabitants whose farms were injured and whose crops were lost. It is difficult to see how we can grant a decree in favor of North Dakota for the benefit of individuals against the State of Minnesota in view of the Eleventh Amendment to the Constitution, which forbids the extension of the judicial power of the United States to any suit in law or equity prosecuted against any one of the United States by citizens of another State or by citizens and subjects of a foreign State. * * * The right of a State as parens patriae to bring suit to protect the general comfort, health, or property rights of its inhabi- tants threatened by the proposed or continued action of another State, by prayer for injunction, is to be differentiated from its lost power as a sovereign to present and enforce individual claims of its citizens as their trustee against a sister State. For this reason the prayer for a money decree for the damage done by the floods of 1915 and 1916 to the farms of individuals in the Bois de Sioux Valley, is denied, for lack of jurisdiction. |