Overview

Hinderlider v. La Plata River & Cherry Creek Ditch Co., 304 U.S. 92

Case citation

Case citation is the system used in many countries to identify the decisions in past court cases, either in special series of books called reporters or law reports, or in a 'neutral' form which will identify a decision wherever it was reported...

  (1938), is best known for announcing that "general common law" or "general federal common law" no longer exists in the American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

  legal system and is unconstiutional. However, federal courts retain the power to create federal common law

Federal common law

Federal common law is a term of United States law used to describe common law that is developed by the federal courts, instead of by the courts of the various states...

  in specific areas related to federal rights and interests.

An archetypical example of such federal common law is that relating to disputes between states

U.S. state

A U.S. state is any one of the 50 federated states of the United States of America that share sovereignty with the federal government. Because of this shared sovereignty, an American is a citizen both of the federal entity and of his or her state of domicile. Four states use the official title of...

  of the United States. Hinderlider was the first case to reaffirm the existence of federal common law for other purposes, specifically here, the interpretation of an interstate compact

Interstate compact

An interstate compact is an agreement between two or more states of the United States of America. Article I, Section 10 of the United States Constitution provides that "no state shall enter into an agreement or compact with another state" without the consent of Congress...

  governing water rights between states.