US Supreme Court adds two water cases to docket News
US Supreme Court adds two water cases to docket

The US Supreme Court [official website] on Tuesday added [order list, PDF] to its docket two original jurisdiction cases concerning water rights.

In Texas v. New Mexico [docket], the court will determine [SCOTUSblog materials] whether New Mexico is in violation of the Rio Grande Compact and the Rio Grande Project Act [texts, PDF] by reducing Texas’ water supplies and apportionment of water. The complaint [text, PDF] arises after New Mexico officials intercepted Texas water and used as their own causing harm to Texas citizens.

In Florida v. Georgia [docket], the court must determine [SCOTUSblog materials] whether Florida is entitled to equitable apportionment of the waters of the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint River Basin and injunctive relief against Georgia to sustain an adequate flow of fresh water. Florida complains [complaint, PDF] that due to Georgia’s increase in consumption of water their fisheries are suffering.

THIS DAY @ LAW

Bank of England granted political independence

On May 6, 1997, British Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown announced that the Bank of England would be granted political independence for the first time in the three-hundred year history of the Bank. This policy was statutized in the subsequent Bank of England Act of 1998 gave the Bank independent control of British monetary policy effective June 1, 1998. Read the Bank of England Act of 1998.

Chinese Exclusion Act barred Chinese laborers from US

On May 6, 1882, President Chester A. Arthur signed the Chinese Exclusion Act, barring Chinese laborers from entering the United States and prohibiting courts from bestowing US citizenship on Chinese. Connecticut Senator Joseph Hawley spoke out against the Act in these words: Let the proposed statue be read 100 years hence, dug out of the dust of ages and forgotten as it will be except for a line of sneer by some historian, and ask the young man not well read in the history of this country what was the reason for excluding these men and he would not be able to find it in the law. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and its successors were abolished in 1943 at the insistence of President Franklin Roosevelt.