The McCarran Amendment, 43 U.S.C. § 666 (1952) is a federal law enacted by the

United States Congress The United States Congress is the legislature, legislative branch of the federal government of the United States. It is a Bicameralism, bicameral legislature, including a Lower house, lower body, the United States House of Representatives, ...

in 1952 which waives the United States'

sovereign immunity Sovereign immunity, or crown immunity, is a legal doctrine whereby a monarch, sovereign or State (polity), state cannot commit a legal wrong and is immune from lawsuit, civil suit or criminal law, criminal prosecution, strictly speaking in mode ...

in suits concerning ownership or management of

water right Water right in water law is the right of a user to use water from a water source, e.g., a river, stream, pond or source of groundwater. In areas with plentiful water and few users, such systems are generally not complicated or contentious. In ot ...

s. It amended Chapter 15 (Appropriation of Waters; Reservoir Sites) of Title 43 (Public Lands) of the

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. The McCarran Amendment gives others the right to join in such a

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as a

defendant In court proceedings, a defendant is a person or object who is the party either accused of committing a crime in criminal prosecution or against whom some type of civil relief is being sought in a civil case. Terminology varies from one juris ...

. Prior to the Amendment, sovereign immunity kept the United States from being joined in any suits. The Amendment enabled suits concerning federal water rights to be tried in state courts.

Text

Background

While the original amendment specified that state courts only held concurrent jurisdiction in state and federal district courts in water rights

adjudication Adjudication is the legal process by which an arbiter or judge reviews evidence and argumentation, including legal reasoning set forth by opposing parties or litigants, to come to a decision which determines rights and obligations between th ...

cases under The McCarran Amendment, the case '' Colorado River Water Conservation District v. United States'', 424 U.S. 800 (1976) specified that all water rights adjudication cases must originate in state court, though they can be appealed later to federal courts. Many Indian legal scholars hoped the McCarran Amendment would not require origination in state courts in the Western states that joined the union late and were held under a "disclaimer clause", however the

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found that the ''Colorado River Water Conservation District'' case applied to all states in the 1985 ''Arizona v. San Carlos Apache Tribe'' case. This case had an extraordinary effect on the adjudication of Indian reserved water rights, though some legal scholars argue that it was never intended to apply to

Indian reservation An American Indian reservation is an area of land land tenure, held and governed by a List of federally recognized tribes in the contiguous United States#Description, U.S. federal government-recognized Native American tribal nation, whose gov ...

s. Elizabeth McCallister argued in 1976 ''American Indian Law Review'' article that

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shows proponents of the bill were more concerned with adjudication of individual water rights against the United States, rather than claims against Indian reservations. In fact, the acting secretary of the Interior at the time argued such a law should only be enacted if it explicitly excluded Indian reservations. As a result of the McCarran Amendment and subsequent

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s, many Indian tribes have opted to quantify reserved water rights through negotiations rather than outright adjudication, as water rights adjudication in state court has often held poor results for tribes, and has proven very costly.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Mccarran Amendment, The Water law in the United States United States federal judiciary legislation United States federal public land legislation