In Term-Opener, Justices Will Hear Mississippi’s Complaint that Tennessee Is Stealing Its Groundwater
This post was originally published on SCOTUSblog. Reprinted under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 3.0.
Mississippi v. Tennessee is not only the Supreme Court’s first oral argument of the 2021-22 term, but it is also the first time that states have asked the court to weigh in on how they should share an interstate aquifer. The court’s decision could fundamentally restructure interstate groundwater law in the United States for decades — or the case could be dismissed immediately on the grounds that Mississippi has failed to allege the proper cause of action.
The case will be argued on Monday, and it will be the court’s first in-person argument in a year and a half. In March 2020, the justices stopped meeting in person due to the coronavirus pandemic, and since then, all arguments have been conducted by phone. But the justices are returning to the bench for the start of their new term (though the courtroom will remain mostly empty aside from attorneys, members of the press, and the justices themselves).
Like most original jurisdiction water cases, Mississippi v. Tennessee has taken a few years to wend its way to Supreme Court oral argument, and that argument …
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