Morris v. Bean’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

1 federal appellate ·

Most-quoted passages

The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 5 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““The water in the stream, which has a propensity to seek its level, and will continue in its current to the sea, is in strict reality the veritable thing in controversy. It knows no imaginary state or county lines, and is a thing in which no man has a property until captured; to be applied to a beneficial use. The right of appropriation is; recognized in law, which means the right of diversion and use. It is the right, not to any specific water, but to some definite quantity of that which may at any time be running in the stream. So the right acquired by an appropriation includes the right to have the water flow in the stream to the point of diversion. The fact of a state line intersecting the stream does not, within itself, impinge upon that right. In other words, the appropriation may still be acquired, although the stream is interstate, and not local to one state; nor will the mere fact that the stream has its source in one state authorize a diversion of all the water thereof as against an earlier and prior appropriator across the line in another state. On the contrary, one who has acquired a right to the water of a stream by prior appropriation, in accordance with the laws of the state where made, is protected in such right as against subsequent appropriators, though the latter withdraw the water within the limits of a different state.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Bean v. Morris