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The Upper Basins' Political Conundrum: A Deal is Not a Deal <br />three methods have been employed in the basins being examined in <br />this paper, as discussed below and in the next section of this paper. <br />1. Litigation <br />Interstate litigation is brought in the U.S. Supreme Court pursuant to its <br />original jurisdiction.10 In such cases, the Supreme Court's jurisdiction is <br />exclusivell and it acts as a trial court (i.e., as the trier of the facts). In <br />interstate litigation involving competing claims to the waters of interstate <br />streams, the court applies the doctrine of equitable apportionment. This <br />doctrine was first announced in 1907 in Kansas v. Colorado,12 which involved <br />the Arkansas River: <br />A basic tenet of the doctrine is that "equality of right,"not equality of <br />amounts apportioned, should govern. "Equality of right" simply means <br />that the states stand "on the same level," or "on an equal plane, ... in point <br />of power and right, under our constitutional system. "13 <br />In Kansas v. Colorado, Kansas generally applied the riparian doctrine, while <br />Colorado had unequivocally embraced the doctrine of prior appropriation. <br />Thus, this case left unresolved whether and how the doctrine of prior <br />appropriation would be applied by the Supreme Court in apportioning the <br />waters of an interstate stream between two states which both employed that <br />doctrine. <br />The Supreme Court addressed this question in 1922 in Wyoming v. <br />Colorado,14 which involved the Laramie River, a tributary of the North Platte <br />River: <br />io U.S. CONST. art. III, §2. <br />11 28 U.S.C.A. § 1251(a) (1993). <br />12 Kansas v. Colorado, 206 U.S. 46 (1907) (White, J., and McKenna, J., concurring in <br />result). <br />13 D. GETCHES, suprn note 5, at 405, quoting from language in the Court's decision. <br />14 Wyoming v. Colorado, 259 U.S. 419 (1922). The Court's original 1922 decree was <br />amended the very next year in Wyoming v. Colorado, 260 U.S. 1 (1923) (decree amended). <br />Enforcement actions then ensued in the 1930s. See Wyoming v. Colorado, 286 U.S. 494 (1932) <br />(motion to dismiss overruled), Wyoming v. Colorado, 298 U.S. 573 (1936) (injunction granted), <br />and Wyoming v. Colorado, 309 U.S. 572 (1940) (reh'g denied). Upon joint motion of the <br />parties, the original 1922 decree, as amended in 1923, was vacated and a new decree entered <br />in Wyoming v. Colorado, 353 U.S. 953 (1957) (jt. mtn. granted, decree vacated, decree <br />entered). <br />s ~ <br />