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International Water Law And Fresh Water Dispute Resolution: A Cosean Perspective, Tamar Meshell, Moin A. Yahya

University of Colorado Law Review

International Water Law has developed a set of rules for resolving interstate fresh water disputes that govern both the substance of these disputes and the conduct of the disputing states. "Equitable and reasonable utilization" is commonly considered as the leading substantive rule, "no significant harm" as subsidiary to it, and the "duty to cooperate" as the central procedural rule. The purpose of this Article is to analyze the merits of these substantive and procedural rules under the lens of the celebrated Coase theorem. The "normative" part of the Coase theorem observes that if transaction costs are high, then the legal …