For those curious about this doctrine. The “Colorado River doctrine” is named for Colorado River Water Conservation District v. United States, 424 U.S. 800 (1976).

1/
The actual background is kind of fascinating, and if anyone (particularly east of the Mississippi where you don’t deal with prior appropriation) wants an explanation of “what the hell does ‘owning’ water even mean” I can explain.

2/
But the upshot is this:

Following changes to Colorado water law administration there were a whole lot of lawsuits in Colorado courts about water rights, including the water rights of tribal land (administered by the US itself).

3/
Congress also passed a law allowing the US government to be joined as a defendant in water rights cases in state court over the adjudication and enforcement of water rights, particularly where the US government owned or controlled the water.

4/
So, when the US sued the Colorado River Conservation District, it was also being joined as a defendant in the state court cases. And now the federal court has a conundrum:

“I’m being asked to adjudicate the same issue as raised in state court”.

5/
Abstention had existed before, but all dealt with issues of “guys, this is really about state law first and foremost” (Pullman, Burford), or just order of operations (Younger, can’t sue for civil rights violations related to a prosecution until the prosecution is over).

6/
The court in Colorado River looked at the cases and said “won’t this just be a massive waste of time? The state court claims came first, resolving all the same issues, and nobody wants a bunch of piecemeal cases decided by different courts with inconsistent decisions”

7/
And when that view was endorsed by the Supreme Court, a doctrine was born. It’s basically the doctrine of “don’t waste everybody’s time with duplicative claims you bring in multiple courts over the same underlying issue”

8/
Note: this is different from the Rooker-Feldman doctrine some followers may have seen me and @AkivaMCohen laughing about. That has to do with a lack of jurisdiction because the state court already rendered a decision. Abstention is about concurrent cases.

9/9

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More from @apark2453

8 Dec
I *do* want to pick it apart!

And... Wow. This is art.

154 pages.

One entry on the table of contents: "Motion for leave... page 1".

1/ Image
Typically one can sue a group of defendants together whey they acted in concert. It'd be a weird kind of joinder rule to be allowed to file one lawsuit against three different defendants under three different theories of wrongdoing solely because "it's all election stuff".

2/ Image
Each of these is alleged at a different state. None are *true* of course, but even if true I'm not sure why Paxton thinks he can file one suit against all three on three different theories.

And the third is just silly.

3/ ImageImageImage
Read 76 tweets
8 Dec
wsj.com/articles/south…

This is an interesting set of hot takes from the governor overseeing the highest positive testing rate of any state in the country.

I'm sure it won't come as a galloping shock that her "better" numbers are bullshit.

1/
This is already untrue. Cases in the last seven days/100,000 in South Dakota is 98.6. Illinois is 75.6.

If we include data since January 21st, South Dakota's per capita rate is almost twice as high.

But I'm sure we'll stick with "last seven days" throughout, right?

2/ Image
Recent figures are probably the better measure, and Noem is correct to use them. Otherwise we're getting a lot of noise from the early going based on where the virus cropped up. At this point it's everywhere. So current numbers are more indicative of competence

3/
Read 6 tweets
8 Dec
Let's take some time to break this down.

Starting with the weird analogy between "actual distribution of species on the planet" and "representation of groups of people in fictional media."

It's a step or two removed, but it's basically the thermian argument.

1/
It requires viewing a fictional world like a continent: it either does or does not have certain things in it and that's just how it goes. There just don't happen to be kangaroos in Europe, so don't complain.

NB: there are, people pay to see them

2/
As no one should need to be reminded of: fictional worlds are not real places. Everything in them is put in them by choice. There's no natural selection, no speciation which leads to some species of birds in some places and not others. Every blade of grass is put in by choice

3/
Read 6 tweets
7 Dec
All right, R is off work and can confirm all of this. I'll preface by saying: I definitely got heated after someone suggested I get the gun I didn't know they had and shoot myself in the head.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

1/
First, to set the stage: both R and I were a bit leery of it to begin with. We'd had get-togethers and in all of the recent ones where were a lot of "those goddamned millennials" talk.

2/
With "millennial" meaning "anyone younger than them" since apparently it covered everyone from school administrators probably only a decade my mother's junior to my younger brother's (currently a college Senior) classmates.

Obviously that's not quite right.

3/
Read 20 tweets
7 Dec
Oh my goodness this article is bad. I have the day off so let’s do a good, old fashioned, “how are you this wrong” breakdown. And I want to lead off with the best one.

Keep in mind this is an argument for the US Supreme Court overturning the PA Supreme Court.

1/
The basic argument is this: Latches can’t apply here because the challenge is to whether a statute is constitutional. So the Supreme Court would reverse.

To support this the author cites, poorly, to “Stilp v. Hafer (1998)”.

2/
I say poorly because it’s missing two of the ways you’d know that’s not a US Supreme Court case. The actual citation is either “553 Pa. 128 (1998)” or “718 A.2d 290 (Pa. 1998).”

So let’s be clear: even if the author were right, this is SCOPA deviating from SCOPA precedent.

3/
Read 37 tweets
6 Dec
Small problem. Even in your “fediverse” model, so long as I can post somewhere I don’t myself own, you are either (a) accepting someone else is liable for what I wrote, or (b) need the equivalent of 230.

If I can’t what you’ve created is email. If I *can*, you need 230.

1/
Whether people *should* want the interconnectivity of “publicly posting on other people’s walls/timelines/replies”, clearly people *do* want it.

The vagueness of “interconnection of sovereign spaces owned and controlled by individuals” only muddies the waters.

2/
If your vision is “twitter or Facebook but everyone owns their own page and no 230”, each individual “client” would face incredible liability.

If your vision is that people wouldn’t be able to freely post on other people’s pages, you haven’t made an FB competitor.

3/
Read 4 tweets

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