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I OOIl59 I 2Z2 OREGON LAW REVIEW [Vol. 36 trust laws,- Forecasting the confusion that ensued, Justice Jackson reminded his colleagues that they were not faced with an attack on the constitutionality of a law of Congress, In a dissenting opinion, he said: The recklessness of such a course is emphasized when we consider that Con- gress has not one line of legislation deliberately designed to take over federal responsibility for this important and complicated enterprise. There is no federal department or personnel with national experience in the subject on which Con- gress can can for counsel in framing regulatory legislation. A poorer time to thrust upon Congress the necessity for framing a plan for nationalization of in- surance control would be hard to find,5 1 .~ '. Shortly after the decision the wartime Congress rushed through a three-year "moratorium" on the application of the antitrust laws to insurance, After January 1, 1948, Congress said, the Federal laws were to be applicable only "to the extent that such business is not regu- lated by state law:'6 THE PELTON DAM CASE ~. i Federal Power Commission v. Oregon (the Pelton Dam case) was decided in 1955.7 The immediate effect of the decision was to grant to the Portland General Electric Company a license to construct a dam for the generation of electric power on the Deschutes River in north- central Oregon, The long-range effect can only be conjectured, but the general lines are already discernible, It is the thesis of this article that by this decision the United States Supreme Court: ( 1) has deprived the seventeen western states--comprising, gen- erally speaking, all the states west of the 98th meridian-of effective control over the waters useful and indeed necessary for the carrying on of their present irrigation economy; (2) has beclouded water rights vested in private, municipal, and corporate users in those states to such an extent that the previous recognition of the use of these waters under applicable doctrines of appropriation in the various states, constituting valuable property rights, has been impaired and perhaps in some cases destroyed; (3) has, by the implied introduction of a concept of residual F ed- eral water rights based upon ownership of land, whether public domain or reserved land or otherwise, brought into existence a new doctrine of riparian rights, one that is wholly at odds with the existing appropria- tive system and one which will, if expanded, without question retard the development of the economy of those states. ,j 'J . United States v. Southeastern Underwriters Ass'n, 322 U.S. 533 1944). 51d. at 590-91. 6 Act of March 9, 1945. 59 STAT. 33 (c,20), 7349 U.S, 435 (1955). The application described the dam as the Pelton Project.