New Book Teaches Techniques for Water Rights Dispute Resolutions

Water rights/allocation disputes occur frequently throughout the United States. These disputes often pit jurisdiction against jurisdiction in expensive, time-consuming litigation full of uncertainty and lengthy delays. To make matters worse, verdicts usually are long in coming and all too often result in no clear winner.

The Environmental Law Institute has published a new book titled Beyond Litigation: Case Studies in Water Rights Disputes edited by Craig Anthony (Tony) Arnold and Leigh A. Jewell. The book demonstrates how judicial resolution does not always resolve conflict by examining a particular conflict that is the subject of a major judicial opinion on water law.

Instead of limiting their analysis solely to legal doctrine or theories, the authors probed the history of the disputes--both before and after the judicial decision--to find lessons about how water rights conflicts can be resolved. They also used actual case studies to teach techniques on how and how not to resolve water rights disputes.

"The book is an excellent example of law in action," states A. Dan Tarlock, distinguished professor of law and co-director of the Program in Environmental and Energy Law at Chicago-Kent College of Law, Illinois Institute of Technology. "It supplements our understanding of the function of water law and litigation and poses some challenging questions about how future disputes are best resolved."

The six articles covered in the book share one common observation: litigation is frequently an important but insufficient component in the process toward dispute resolution. Parties find that ultimate resolution of their conflicts requires negotiation, public education, lobbying and legislation, additional litigation and, in some instances, even the ability to live with contained conflict.

Adds Tarlock, "Six well-researched studies of the aftermath of major western water cases such as the Mono Lake decision ask the question, 'what is the relationship between litigation and the effective redress of the underlying problems that produced the litigation?' The answers range from none to more litigation to complex institutional changes that trigger the fair reallocation of existing water rights."