Legal History Commons^™

State And Regional Water Planning, Brigette Buynak, Susan Kelly, Sarah Armstrong

Water Matters!

A statewide water planning effort was initiated by the New Mexico legislature in the 2003 session. The Interstate Stream Commission (ISC),in collaboration with the Office of the State Engineer (OSE) and the Water Trust Board, was tasked with preparing and implementing a comprehensive state water plan. Regional water planning had begun much earlier, prompted by a lawsuit that El Paso filed against New Mexico in 1983, El Paso v. Reynolds.

The State Water Plan Act of 2003 (Act) was intended to promote stewardship of the state’s water resources and to establish clear policies and strategies for management of the state’s …

Groundwater, Darcy S. Bushnell, Diego Urbina

Water Matters!

Since the late nineteenth century, New Mexicans have been developing the state’s groundwater resources. From hand-dug wells to proposed wells that could penetrate to 12,000 feet, residents have sought sources to supplement and replace surface water. The state relies upon groundwater to supply almost 50 percent of its needs.

As the population grows and drought intensifies, groundwater sources are tapped with increasing urgency. Limited steps are being taken to preserve groundwater through conservation, groundwater recharge, and regulation.

Deep Water Regulation, Paul Bossert, Kari Olson

Water Matters!

With most of the surface water in New Mexico fully appropriated and with groundwater sources being drawn down and becoming less reliable, the search for new sources of water is reaching further and further afield of traditional sources and methods. Water wells deeper than 2,000 feet have been rare due to the expense of deep drilling and the uncertainty of finding potable water. Yet the combined circumstances of advances in hydrology and the escalating demand for new water have driven the search for water deeper than was previously considered practical.

Community Water Systems, Joanne Hilton, Susan Kelly, Sarah Armstrong

Water Matters!

Apart from the major cities along the Rio Grande corridor, much of New Mexico remains relatively rural. Recent studies estimate a 2013population of around 2,085,500 statewide. In the state fiscal year 2011,about 1,836,000 people, or 88 percent of New Mexico’s population obtain their water from community water systems. Approximately 284,000 people, or about14 percent of the population, receive their drinking water from community water systems serving fewer than 5,000 people. As of 2012, there are 1,148 public water systems that provide drinking water in New Mexico. Of these systems, 593are community water systems; of these, 546 serve fewer than 5,000 …

Water Marketing, Jeremy Oat, Laura Paskus

Water Matters!

Water doesn’t just flow around New Mexico in streams and rivers: it also moves around on paper. Since all of the state’s surface-water and most of its groundwater have already been allocated, the only way for cities, developers, or conservation organizations to find new water supplies is to buy and transfer water rights from old uses and places to new uses and places. The N.M. Office of the State Engineer (OSE) approves each of these transfers, most of which are relatively small, but the numbers can add up over time. Between 1982 and 2011, for instance, 21,000 acre-feet of Middle …

Water Litigation In The Lower Rio Grande, Darcy S. Bushnell

Water Matters!

The water allocation issues are hotly contested in south-central New Mexico and the surrounding area. Today, the river and those who depend on it face more administrative challenges in the face of shrinking water supplies and increased population. These challenges have given rise to two ongoing lawsuits: the Lower Rio Grande Adjudication,New Mexico v. EBID, et al., 96-CV-888 (1996) (N.M. v. EBID) in the New Mexico Third Judicial District Court (adjudication court) and the New Mexico v. United States,et al., D.N.M. 11-CV-691 (2011) (N.M. v.U.S.) in United States District Court of New Mexico (U.S. District Court).

The Rio Grande As An International River, Margaret J. Vick

Water Matters!

The Rio Grande is divided into two major river reaches and has different legal regimes for each. New Mexico is primarily concerned with the Rio Grande from the headwaters in Colorado to Ft. Quitman in Texas, a distance of approximately 670 miles. This section of the river is the subject of the1906 Rio Grande Convention (Treaty) between the United States and Mexico. The lower section of the Rio Grande from Ft. Quitman to the Gulf of Mexico is the subject of the 1944 Rivers Treaty between the United States and Mexico; the 1944 Rivers Treaty also includes the Colorado and …

Eastern New Mexico Rural Water System (Ute Pipeline Project), Jerold Widdison, Paul Van Gulick, Darcy S. Bushnell

Water Matters!

The Ute Pipeline Project (Project), officially known as the Eastern New Mexico Rural Water System (ENMRWS),is a 151-mile-long pipeline project to provide a sustainable municipal and industrial water supply for several eastern New Mexico communities and a military base. The Congress authorized major federal funding for the Ute Pipeline in the Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009. This important milestone for the project was reached after about 45 years of effort.Attention now shifts to myriad details involved in actually constructing, financing,and administering the project.

Iron Man Of The Rules, Patrick E. Higginbotham

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

To grasp Professor Cooper's contribution to rulemaking, it is helpful to review issues that the Advisory Committee confronted during his tenure. I will focus on the first four of his twenty years of service.

Ed Cooper, Rule 56, And Charles E. Clark's Fountain Of Youth, Steven S. Gensler

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Nobody had a greater impact on the formulation of the original Civil Rules than Clark. His role as both the principal architect2 and the principal draftsman3 of the Civil Rules is well known. As Professor Wright once put it, although the Civil Rules were a joint effort, "the end product bears the unmistakable Clark stamp."4 But Clark started shaping the Civil Rules even before drafting began.5 Initially, Chief Justice Hughes thought the civil rules project should be limited to creating rules for actions at law (leaving in place-and separate-the existing equity rules).6 A passionate advocate for merging law and equity …

Professor Edward Cooper: The Quintessential Reporter, Mary Kay Kane

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Ed Cooper's twenty-year service as the Chief Reporter for the Civil Rules Advisory Committee deserves special recognition and tribute not only because of its longevity-which is remarkable in and of itself-but more particularly, because of the scope and depth of the rule changes he has helped to shepherd into law.

Professor Ed Cooper: Zen Minimalist, Linda S. Mullenix

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

In celebration of his twentieth year as the Reporter for the Advisory Committee on Civil Rules, I write to contribute some modest reflections on Professor Cooper's tenure as Advisory Committee Reporter. My comments are those of an academic who had the opportunity to observe the Advisory Committee for nearly a decade, but they are largely the comments of an outsider. Readers might be disappointed to find that there is no dish or inside baseball here.

Shoes That Did Not Drop, Richard Marcus

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

I take "Shoes That Did Not Drop"' as my topic because I appreciate, by now, that what the Advisory Committee on Civil Rules does not do is, in some ways, as important as what it does. Similarly, the decision not to do something is equally important as, and may be more difficult than, the decision to do something. It may sometimes seem that amending the Rules is too easy. Greg Joseph once said that they are amended as often as the telephone book. Some even think that it was a mistake to create a Rules Committee.3 These reactions are overstated, …

The Twelve-Person Federal Civil Jury In Exile, Thomas D. Rowe Jr.

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

In the mid-1990s, the Advisory Committee on Civil Rules, with Fifth Circuit Judge Patrick Higginbotham as Chair and our honoree, Professor Ed Cooper, in the early years of his long service as Reporter, unanimously (coincidentally, by a 12-0 vote) proposed an amendment to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 48 that would have required the seating of twelve-member juries in federal civil trials. The requirement of a unanimous verdict, unless waived by the parties, and the abolition of alternate jurors would have been unaffected; attrition could reduce a jury's size below twelve members, with a floor of six unless the parties …

The Dialectic Of Stare Decisis Doctrine, Colin Starger

All Faculty Scholarship

In the United States Supreme Court, the concept of stare decisis operates as both metadoctrine and doctrine. On the one hand, stare decisis functions as a generally applicable presumption in favor of adherence to precedent. This presumption is metadoctrinal because it provides a generic argument against overruling that applies independently of the substantive context of any given case. On the other hand, when the Court considers overruling a particularly controversial precedent, it usually weighs the constraining force of stare decisis by invoking factors and tests announced in its own prior caselaw. In other words, the Court has precedent about when …

An Incomplete Revolution: Reexaming The Law, History, And Politics Of Marital Property, Mary Ziegler

Scholarly Publications

Did the divorce revolution betray the interests of American women? While there has been considerable disagreement about the impact of divorce reform on women’s standard of living, many agree that judicial practices involving the division of marital property and the allocation of alimony have systematically disadvantaged women. Most often, in the courts and the academy, commentators see these practices as evidence of the need for family law reform.

These conclusions rely on a shared account of the history of divorce reform. According to this account, the transformation of divorce law in the 1970s and 1980s was a “silent revolution,” a …

Pre-Constitutional Law And Constitutions: Spanish Colonial Law And The Constitution Of Cádiz, M C. Mirow

Faculty Publications

This article contributes to the intellectual and legal history of this constitutional document. It also provides a close study of how pre-constitutional laws are employed in writing constitutions. It examines the way Spanish colonial law, known as "derecho indiano" in Spanish, was used in the process of drafting the Constitution and particularly the way these constitutional activities and provisions related to the Americas. The article asserts that this pre-constitutional law was used in three distinct ways: as general knowledge related to the Americas and their institutions; as a source for providing a particular answer to a specific legal question; and …

Financial Retrenchment And Institutional Entrenchment: Will Legal Education Respond, Explode, Or Just Wait It Out?, Ian Weinstein

Faculty Scholarship

Both markets and ideas have turned against the American legal profession. Legal hiring has contracted, and law school enrollments are decreasing. The business models of big law and legal education are under pressure, current levels of student indebtedness seem unsustainable, and a hero has yet to emerge from our fragmented regulatory structures. In the realm of ideas, the information revolution has sparked deep critiques of structured knowledge and expertise, opening the roles of the law and the university in society to reexamination. We are less enamored of the scholar-lawyer and gaze with longing at technocrats. I hope that clinical law …

Post-Crisis Reconsideration Of Federal Court Reform, David R. Cleveland

Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Section 1983 Is Born: The Interlocking Supreme Court Stories Of Tenney And Monroe, Sheldon Nahmod

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.