User:Dwolfor3/sandbox

= Texas v. New Mexico and Colorado =

Texas v. New Mexico and Colorado, 141-orig U.S. ___ (2018), was a Supreme Court case argued and decided during the 2017 term of the Supreme Court of the United States. The case involved an interstate dispute regarding New Mexico's compliance with the Rio Grande Compact of 1938, an agreement which established a plan for equitable apportionment of the water in the Rio Grande Basin among the states of Colorado, New Mexico, and Texas. After gaining the permission of the Supreme Court to file a complaint in the federal court system in early 2014, the state of Texas formally accused New Mexico of discretely channeling the water reserves of the Rio Grande for its own use and depriving Texas of its equal share in the river's resources. Asserting that the violation was an injury to the general interests of the United States, the federal government followed suit and filed a complaint against New Mexico, which raised the question of whether the federal government has the legal right to intervene in matters regarding the relevant type of interstate compact. The federal government and all three of the states then agreed to take the conflict before the Supreme Court. The case was argued before the Supreme Court on January 8th, 2018, and decided on March 5th of the same year; the court unanimously ruled that the federal government could intercede in the dispute to protect its own interests, but the Court chose not to rule on the issue of whether the federal government has the right to initiate a lawsuit against a state regarding this type of interstate agreement or on the issue of whether New Mexico violated the terms of the Compact. Dwolfor3 (talk) 18:02, 3 October 2018 (UTC

Question Presented
Does the federal government of the United States have the right to file a suit against the State of New Mexico for non-compliance with the terms of the Rio Grande Compact, an interstate agreement?

Ruling
Justice Neil Gorsuch delivered the Court's unanimous opinion, holding that the federal government has the right to file or join suits in matters related to interstate compacts provided that the compacts at hand are directly related to the operations and obligations of the federal government. The opinion cites the precedent set in Maryland v. Louisiana (1981) that the government of the United States sometimes has the right to intervene in interstate compacts and clarifies this federal right by adding that, for intervention to be allowed, the dispute must be clearly related to "distinctively federal interests".

Decision and Rationale
The justices ruled that adherence to the Rio Grande Compact is of direct relevance to the interests of the federal government for three distinct reasons:


 * 1) The terms of the Rio Grande Compact are fundamentally linked to the operations of the Rio Grande Project, a federal program.
 * 2) The federal government is significantly involved in the functions and coordination of the Compact.
 * 3) The federal government relies upon the proper operation of the Compact in order to fulfill its treaty commitments to the government of Mexico.

Since these connections prove that the operations of the Rio Grande Compact are directly related to the interests the federal government of the United States, the Court ruled that the federal government does have the right to intervene and join Texas as a plaintiff against New Mexico.

Future Questions
As an additional 4th consideration of the United States' case, the justices cited the federal government's attempt to join an existing lawsuit instead of filing its own as one of the reasons for the legal clarity of the case and chose not to rule on the issue of whether the federal government has the right to file a unique suit itself in cases involving interstate compact law. Because of this, the question of whether the federal government has the right to intervene by initiating its own suit (without any existing suits filed by states) remains unanswered.

Moreover, the Court chose not to rule on New Mexico's compliance with the Rio Grande Compact during this case, so the interstate dispute will remain unresolved until such time that the Court chooses to address the question in a future case.

Article Evaluation
For this exercise, I've chosen to evaluate the article 2008 Kosovo declaration of independence.

There wasn't too much in the article that I found distracting, except perhaps for the mention of Kosovo's frequency of human trafficking. Despite the claim that it resulted from NATO intervention (an action of relevance to Kosovo's independence), it still didn't seem to be of direct importance to the topic, especially since this increase in human trafficking occurred before the declaration of independence and there doesn't appear to be evidence of any direct link between the frequency of human trafficking and the country's desire for political independence, which predated this increase.

Some information in the article seems to be out of date. In the section following the subheading Declaration of 2008 - present, some developments are only updated through early 2008. For example, the section states that Kosovo is still deliberating on its choice of national anthem, but the article Europe (anthem) claims that Kosovo chose its anthem in June of 2008.

Besides the errors mentioned above, the article could also be improved in the section that describes the reaction of Albanian ethnics within Kosovo to the declaration. This section merely claims that Albanian Kosovans responded to the declaration with joy, but surely the public reaction of Kosovo's dominant ethnic group couldn't have been universally and unconditionally positive. It stands to reason that there must be evidence of skepticism on the part of some ethnically-Albanian Kosovans. Even Wikipedia asserts that this section requires expansion to be truly informative.

The article does not seem heavily biased to me. It seems to present the facts without personal commentary and dedicates a seemingly reasonable amount of information to both the pro-independence and anti-independence attitudes, as well as the actions of both sides of the conflict. The most notable exception during my reading would be the simplistic claim referenced above that Albanian residents of Kosovo celebrated the Kosovan declaration of independence, but this could be the result of the author's lack of information at the time or a failure in thorough research rather than purposeful bias.

All the citations I checked had real sources and links behind them, although not all information was cited properly. For example, none of the information under the subheading Background was supported with sources or citations, throwing the accuracy of the information in that section into question. Likewise, the information under the subheading Declaration of 2008 - present also lacks any citations. Because of errors like this, the article as a whole is not nearly as trustworthy as it could be.

Great job! Just remember that when you post something you'll want to sign off with four tildes (click in the icon below).Cassell04 (talk) 00:58, 10 September 2018 (UTC)