Court Opinion

ID: 9429328
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:26:26.966217+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:18.914422
License: Public Domain

Justice Stevens,
with whom Justice Blackmun joins, dissenting.
“Nothing in the McCarran Amendment or in its legislative history can be read as limiting the jurisdiction of the federal courts.” Colorado River Water Conservation District v. *573United States, 424 U. S. 800, 821, n. 2 (1976) (Stewart, J., dissenting). That Amendment is a waiver, not a command.1 It permits the United States to be joined as a defendant in state water rights adjudications; it does not purport to diminish the United States’ right to litigate in a federal forum and it is totally silent on the subject of Indian tribes’ rights to litigate anywhere. Yet today the majority somehow concludes that it commands the federal courts to defer to state-court water rights proceedings, even when Indian water rights are involved. Although it is customary for the Court to begin its analysis of questions of statutory construction by examining the text of the relevant statute,2 one may search in vain for any textual support for the Court’s holding today.
“Most of the land in these reservations is and always has been arid. ... It can be said without overstatement that when the Indians were put on these reservations they were not considered to be located in the most desirable area of the Nation. It is impossible to believe that when Congress created the great Colorado River Indian Reservation and when the Executive Department of this Nation created the other reservations they were unaware that most of the lands were of the desert kind— hot, scorching sands — and that water from the river would be essential to the life of the Indian people and to the animals they hunted and the crops they raised.” Arizona v. California, 373 U. S. 546, 598-599 (1963).
This Court has repeatedly recognized that the Government, when it created each Indian reservation, “intended to deal fairly with the Indians by reserving for them the waters *574without which their lands would have been useless.” Id., at 600. See Winters v. United States, 207 U. S. 564 (1908); United States v. Powers, 805 U. S. 527, 532 (1939); Arizona v. California, supra, at 600-601; Cappaert v. United States, 426 U. S. 128, 138-139 (1976). This doctrine, known as the Winters doctrine, is unquestionably a matter oí federal, not state, law. See ante, at 571; Colorado River, supra, at 813. Its underlying principles differ substantially from those applied by the States to allocate water among competing claimants. Unlike state-law claims based on prior appropriation, Indian reserved water rights are not based on actual beneficial use and are not forfeited if they are not used. Vested no later than the date each reservation was created, these Indian rights are superior in right to all subsequent appropriations under state law. Not all of the issues arising from the application of the Winters doctrine have been resolved, because in the past the scope of Indian reserved rights has infrequently been adjudicated.3 The important task of elaborating and clarifying these federal-law issues in the cases now before the Court, and in future cases, should be performed by federal rather than state courts whenever possible.
Federal adjudication of Indian water rights would not fragment an otherwise unified state-court proceeding. Since Indian reserved claims are wholly dissimilar to state-law water claims, and since their amount does not depend on the total volume of water available in the water source or on the quantity of competing claims, it will be necessary to conduct separate proceedings to determine these claims even if the adjudication takes place in state court. Subsequently the state court will incorporate these claims — like claims under state law or Federal Government claims that have been formally adjudicated in the past — into a single inclusive, binding decree for each water source. Thus, as Justice Stewart wrote *575in dissent in Colorado River: “Whether the virtually identical separate proceedings take place in a federal court or a state court, the adjudication of the claims will be neither more nor less ‘piecemeal.’ Essentially the same process will be followed in each instance.” 424 U. S., at 825.
To justify virtual abandonment of Indian water rights claims to the state courts, the majority relies heavily on Colorado River Water Conservation District, which in turn discovered an affirmative policy of federal judicial abdication in the McCarran Amendment.4 I continue to believe that Colorado River read more into that Amendment than Congress intended, and cannot acquiesce in an extension of its reasoning. Although the Court’s decision in Colorado River did, indeed, foreshadow today’s holding, it did not involve an Indian tribe’s attempt to litigate on its own behalf, 424 U. S., at 820, n. 26. The majority today acknowledges that the question in these cases was “not directly answered,” but in fact was “specifically reserved,” in Colorado River. Ante, at 565.
Although in some respects Indian tribes’ water claims are similar to other reserved federal water rights, different treatment is justified. States and their citizens may well be more antagonistic toward Indian reserved rights than other federal reserved rights, both because the former are potentially greater in quantity and because they provide few direct or indirect benefits to non-Indian residents.5 Indians have *576historically enjoyed a unique relationship with the Federal Government, reflecting the tribes’ traditional sovereign status, their treaty-based right to federal protection, and their special economic problems. Recently the Court reaffirmed “ ‘the distinctive obligation of trust incumbent upon the Government in its dealings with these dependent and sometimes exploited people.’” United States v. Mitchell, ante, at 225, quoting Seminole Nation v. United States, 316 U. S. 286, 296 (1942). See also McClanahan v. Arizona State Tax Comm’n, 411 U. S. 164, 168-175 (1973); Rice v. Olson, 324 U. S. 786, 789 (1945).6
One important aspect of the special relationship is 28 U. S. C. § 1362, which embodies a federal promise that Indian tribes will be able to invoke the jurisdiction of federal courts to resolve matters in controversy arising under federal *577law.7 Congress thereby assured Indians a neutral federal forum — a guarantee whose importance should not be underestimated.8 The Senate Report noted: *578Section 1362 also assured the tribes that they need not rely on the Federal Government to protect their interests, an important safeguard in light of the undeniable potential for conflicts of interest between Indian claims and other Federal Government claims.9
*577“There is great hesitancy on the part of tribes to use State courts. This reluctance is founded partially on the traditional fear that tribes have had of the States in which their reservations are situated. Additionally, the Federal courts have more expertise in deciding questions involving treaties with the Federal Government, as well as interpreting the relevant body of Federal law that has developed over the years.” S. Rep. No. 1507, 89th Cong., 2d Sess., 2 (1966).
*578Despite the silence of the McCarran Amendment regarding Indian tribal claims, and the clear promise of a federal forum embodied in §1362, the Court holds that considerations of “wise judicial administration” require that Indian claims, governed by federal law, must be relegated to the state courts. It is clear to me that the words “wise judicial administration” have been wrenched completely from their ordinary meaning. One of the Arizona proceedings, in which process has been served on approximately 58,000 known water claimants, illustrates the practical consequences of giving the state courts the initial responsibility for the adjudication of Indian water rights claims. Because this Court may not exercise appellate jurisdiction in state-court litigation until after a final judgment has been entered by the highest court of the State, no federal tribunal will be able to review any federal question in the case until the entire litigation has been concluded. The Court promises that “any state-court decision alleged to abridge Indian water rights protected by *579federal law can expect to receive, if brought for review before this Court, a particularized and exacting scrutiny commensurate with the powerful federal interest in safeguarding those rights from state encroachment.” Ante, at 571. If a state court errs in interpreting the Winters doctrine or an Indian treaty, and this Court ultimately finds it necessary to correct that error, the entire comprehensive state-court water rights decree may require massive readjustment. If, however, the quantification of Indian rights were to be adjudicated in a separate federal proceeding — which presumably would be concluded long before the mammoth, conglomerate state adjudication comes to an end — the state judgment would rest on a solid foundation that this Court should never need to examine.
The Court acknowledges the logical force of these propositions, but sets them aside because the exercise of concurrent federal-court jurisdiction would create “the possibility of duplicative litigation, tension and controversy between the federal and state forums, hurried and pressured decisionmak-ing, and confusion over the disposition of property rights.” Ante, at 569. These possibilities arise, as the Court candidly admits, from a pessimistic assessment of the likelihood that state courts, state legislatures, and state parties will assume a “cooperative attitude.” In other words, the state courts might engage in an unseemly rush to judgment in order to give the Indians less water than they fear that the federal courts might provide. If state courts cannot be expected to adhere to orderly processes of decisionmaking because of their hostility to the Indians, the statutory right accorded to Indian tribes to litigate in a federal tribunal is even more important.
In my view, a federal court whose jurisdiction is invoked in a timely manner by an Indian tribe has a duty to determine the existence and extent of the tribe’s reserved water rights under federal law. It is inappropriate to stay or dismiss such federal-court proceedings in order to allow de*580terminations by state courts. In the cases before us today, complaints were timely filed in federal court by the Indian Tribes, before or shortly after the institution of state water adjudication proceedings; the state proceedings in Arizona and Montana remain at an early stage. The District Court should therefore grant the Tribes leave to amend the various complaints, where necessary, to seek adjudication of the scope and quantity of Indian reserved water rights and to eliminate other claims; the suits should then proceed in federal court.
Today, however, on the tenuous foundation of a perceived congressional intent that has never been articulated in statutory language or legislative history, the Court carves out a further exception to the “virtually unflagging obligation” of federal courts to exercise their jurisdiction. The Court does not — and cannot — claim that it is faithfully following general principles of law. After all, just four months ago in Moses H. Cone Memorial Hospital v. Mercury Construction Corp., 460 U. S. 1 (1983), the Court wrote:
“[W]e emphasize that our task in cases such as this is not to find some substantial reason for the exercise of federal jurisdiction by the district court; rather, the task is to ascertain whether there exist ‘exceptional’ circumstances, the ‘clearest of justifications,’ that can suffice under Colorado River to justify the surrender of that jurisdiction. Although in some rare circumstances the presence of state-law issues may weigh in favor of that surrender . . . the presence of federal-law issues must always be a major consideration weighing against surrender.” Id., at 25-26.
Today that “major consideration” is but a peppercorn in the scales, outweighed by the phantom command of the McCarran Amendment. Instead of trying to reconcile this decision with Moses H. Cone and other prior cases, the Court *581merely says: “But water rights adjudication is a virtually unique type of proceeding, and the McCarran Amendment is a virtually unique federal statute, and we cannot in this context be guided by general propositions.” Ante, at 571.
I submit that it is the analysis in Part IV of the Court’s opinion that is “virtually unique.” Accordingly, I respectfully dissent.

 See ante, at 549, n. 1 (quoting the statutory text).

 See, e. g., BankAmerica Corp. v. United States, 462 U. S. 122, 128-130 (1983); Morrison-Knudsen Construction Co. v. Director, Office of Workers’ Compensation Programs, 461 U. S. 624, 630-632 (1983); Griffin v. Oceanic Contractors, Inc., 458 U. S. 564 (1982); Bread Political Action Committee v. FEC, 455 U. S. 577, 580-581 (1982); Consumer Product Safety Comm’n v. GTE Sylvania, Inc., 447 U. S. 102, 108 (1980).

 See generally Note, Indian Reserved Water Rights: The Winters of Our Discontent, 88 Yale L. J. 1689, 1690-1701 (1979).

 Although giving lipserviee to the balancing of factors set forth in Colorado River, the Court essentially gives decisive weight to one factor: the policy of unified water rights adjudication purportedly embodied in the McCarran Amendment. Ante, at 552, 569-570. The Court’s entire discussion of the applicability in these cases of the four Colorado River factors is found in a single vague sentence. Ante, at 570. It is worth noting, however, that the Court leaves open the possibility that Indian water claims will occasionally be heard in federal court. Ante, at 569.

 See Comptroller General of the United States, Reserved Water Rights for Federal and Indian Reservations: A Growing Controversy in Need of Resolution 18 (Nov. 1978) (“Indian reserved water rights present a more pressing problem than Federal reserved water rights. Unlike Federal *576reservations, which are not expected to have large consumptive water demands, many Indian reservations are expected to require significant water quantities to satisfy reservation purposes”). In addition, national forests, national parks, and other federal uses provide benefits to non-Indian residents, including lumbering operations, grazing, recreational purposes, watershed protection, and tourist revenues. See Note, Adjudication of Indian Water Rights Under the McCarran Amendment: Two Courts are Better Than One, 71 Geo. L. J. 1023, 1053-1054 (1983).

 Congress has been particularly solicitous of Indian property rights, including water rights, even when it has expanded the governmental role of the States with respect to Indian affairs. In 1953, a year after the McCarran Amendment was passed, Congress authorized the States to assume general criminal and limited civil jurisdiction within “Indian country,” but it expressly withheld certain matters, including water rights, from state adjudication. Pub. L. 280, 67 Stat. 588, codified at 28 U. S. C. § 1360(b). The Court held in Colorado River that this proviso to Pub. L. 280 did not purport to limit the special consent to jurisdiction given by the McCarran Amendment. 424 U. S., at 812-813, n. 20. But, even assuming that state courts have jurisdiction to adjudicate Indian water claims, the proviso casts serious doubt on the assertion that Congress intended state courts to be the 'preferred, forum.

 The statute provides:
“The district courts shall have original jurisdiction of all civil actions, brought by any Indian tribe or band with a governing body duly recognized by the Secretary of the Interior, wherein the matter in controversy arises under the Constitution, laws, or treaties of the United States.”
Enacted in 1966, § 1362 was designed to remove the $ 10,000 jurisdictional amount limitation with respect to these claims.

 The majority recognizes that there is “a good deal of force” to the assertion that “[s]tate courts may be inhospitable to Indian rights.” Ante, at 567, 566. Federal officials responsible for Indian affairs have consistently recognized the appropriateness of deciding Indian claims in federal, not state, courts. See, e. g., H. R. Rep. No. 2040, 89th Cong., 2d Sess., 2 (1966) (describing position of Interior Department); National Water Comm’n, Water Policies for the Future, Final Report to the President and to the Congress of the United States 478-479 (1973). American Indian Policy Review Commission, Task Force Four, Report on Federal, State, and Tribal Jurisdiction 176 (Comm. Print 1976); American Indian Policy Review Commission, Final Report 333-334 (Comm. Print 1977).
Although the Court correctly observes that state courts, “as much as federal courts, have a solemn obligation to follow federal law,” ante, at 571, state judges, unlike federal judges, tend to be elected and hence to be more conscious of the prevailing views of the majority. Water rights adjudications, which will have a crucial impact on future economic development in the West, are likely to stimulate great public interest and concern. See Note, supra n. 5, at 1052-1053.

 The Senate Report stated:
“Currently, the right of the Attorney General of the United States to bring civil actions on behalf of tribes without regard to jurisdictional amount, a power conferred on him by special statutes, is insufficient in those cases wherein the interest of the Federal Government as guardian of the Indian tribes and as Federal sovereign conflict, in which case the Attorney General will decline to bring the action.
“The proposed legislation will remedy these defects by making it possible for the Indian tribes to seek redress using their own resources and attorneys.” S. Rep. No. 1507, at 2.
If federal courts defer to state-court proceedings, then the Indian tribes will be unable to represent themselves without waiving tribal sovereign immunity from state-court jurisdiction.