Indian Reserved Water Rights: The Winters Doctrine in Its Social and Legal Context (Volume 8) (Legal History of North America) - Softcover

Shurts, John

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0806135417 ISBN 13: 9780806135410

Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press, 2003

Synopsis

In its 1908 decision for Winters v. United States, the Supreme Court affirmed a lower-court ruling that the United States and the Gros Ventre and Assiniboine Indians had reserved rights to water in the Milk River through an 1888 treaty which created the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation in Montana. Since 1908 the Winters decision, or Indian reserved water rights doctrine, has played an important and controversial role in the West.

Indian Reserved Water Rights is the first book-length historical study of the Winters case and the early use of the reserved water doctrine. In the book, John Shurts explains how the litigation and its outcome fit well within the existing legal context and into ongoing efforts at water development in the Milk River Valley. He also examines the life of the Winters Doctrine during its earliest years, primarily through a study of water-rights litigation on the Uintah Reservation in Utah.

About this title

About the Author

John Shurts is the General Counsel of the Northwest Power Planning Council and Adjunct Professor of Law at the Northwestern School of Law at Lewis and Clark College, Portland, Oregon.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
• Publication date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0806135417
• ISBN 13: 9780806135410
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 352