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<br />42
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<br />STANFORD LAW REVIEW
<br />
<br />[Vol. '9: Page 1
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<br />A little more than a year later, apparently with an understanding that the
<br />United States would intervene to give the Court jurisdiction, Arizona filed
<br />another original suit in the Supreme Court in an effort to get a judicial de-
<br />termination of her water rights. Nearly four years were devoted to the filing
<br />of pleadings and motions, the holding of pretrial conferences, and the prep-
<br />aration and entry of a pretrial order. On June 14, 1956, twenty-six years after
<br />Arizona made her first attempt to obtain an adjudication of her water rights
<br />in the Colorado, the trial on the merits began before a Special Master.
<br />The courtroom was overflowing. Dozens of lawyers were there, repre-
<br />senting not only Arizona and California but also three other states having
<br />Lower Basin interests-New Mexico, Nevada, and Utah-all of which had
<br />joined the litigation, though not all voluntarily. Present also, of course, was
<br />the United States, a brooding omnipresence, which could have been going
<br />along for the ride but which, as it turned out, laid a claim to a large part of
<br />the vehicle and to the right to drive besides.
<br />The personalities present were a rich assortment. For Arizona there
<br />were the contrasting ligures of the local lawyers, with tanned and weathered
<br />skin, and of outside counsel-the elegant New Yorker, Theodore KendI,
<br />and the loquacious John Frank, a writer of popular works on law, ex-Iaw-
<br />teacher at Yale, and now a resident of Arizona, though hardly a native.
<br />Both would in a year or so fade from the scene, leaving the case in the hands
<br />of long-time Arizona practitioners.
<br />On the California side the contrast was as great, though not of the same
<br />kind. Leading counsel, with the task not only of defending against Arizona
<br />(and, as it rurned out, against the United States) but also of suppressing
<br />any mutinous tendencies in his own ranks, was Northcutt Ely, a Washing-
<br />ton, D.C., lawyer who had spent a career on the Colorado River beginning
<br />as an aide to Ray Lyman Wilbur, President Hoover's Interior Secretary and
<br />author of the Boulder Dam water delivery contracts with the California
<br />agencies. In the courtroom Ely is a human computer--<lry, unemotional,
<br />imperrurbable, loaded with information instantly available. At his right
<br />hand sat M. J. Dowd, for years the chief engineer of the Imperial Irrigation
<br />District, a veteran of many a tangle in the hearing room, and a quick-witted,
<br />well-informed, cagey witness. To provide the drama on the California side
<br />was Harry Horton, long-time attorney for the Imperial Irrigation District,
<br />highly emotional, quick-tempered, absolutely certain of the justice of his
<br />cause, and suspicious of everybocly-even (it would seem) of his erstwhile
<br />allies.
<br />These and many, many more were present on that opening day, and an
<br />air of Armageddon pervaded the room-though of course there was sharp
<br />disagreement over the identity of the forces of Good and Evil. Men were
<br />present on both sides who had literally spent their lives on the battle over
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