Florida A & M University College of Law Professor Robert Abrams joined a small group of water law experts to write a brief for the Supreme Court. The paper is titled “Does the Doctrine of Equitable Apportionment Apply to Conflicts Between States over Groundwater Resources When Such Resources Are Derived from an Aquifer That Lies Beneath More than One State?”
The American Bar Association published the document in its October 2021 Preview of Supreme Court Cases publication. In November 2021, the U.S. Supreme Court decided Mississippi v. Tennessee. The Court unanimously ruled that water in an underground aquifer that flows across State lines is subject to equitable apportionment between the States, in similar fashion to interstate streams and rivers. The ruling dismissed Mississippi’s complaint.
Abrams is an expert in both Water Law and Environmental Law. He is co-author of a leading casebook in each field: Legal Control of Water Resources (with Barton Thompson, Jr., John Leshy, & Sandra Zellmer, 6th ed. 2018) and Nature Law & Society: A Coursebook on Environmental Law & Policy, (with Zygmunt Plater, Robert Graham, Lisa Heinzerling, David Wirth, & Noah Hall (5rd ed. 2016). He is editor and a contributing author of a book that blends the two fields, Water Rights and Environmental Regulation: A Lawyer’s Guide (2018).
Abrams is past chair of the American Bar Association Water Resources Committee. He is a Life Member of the American Law Institute and a contributing editor of the Preview of United States Supreme Court Cases.
