Ch. 7 Civil and Administrative Law

Civil law includes tort law, property law, contract law, and family law. Property law focuses on the ownership and acquisition of property through conveyances and inheritances. There are several different types of property. There is personal property which is the movable objects owned by a person. Real property is the land or the permanent attachments to the land. Lastly, there is intellectual property which is the ideas or concepts developed by an individual or group.

Water rights seem to be real property. Some laws have been made that deal with the protection of the environment. It is not surprising that there have been laws made to deal with the protection of the environment. There used to be companies that dumped their sewage into rivers. The pollution usually killed off the creatures that lived in the rivers. Sometimes the animals would have malformations from the chemicals in the water. Sometimes companies might use so much water that they drain aquifers, rivers, and streams. That has an entirely negative effect on the environment. Animals would die from lack of water or would move to areas with water. Those places might be near people and would cause problems. Plants would sicken and die of the lack of water.

On our property there is a well. It is our sole source of water. The entire subdivision has wells. The land adjacent to our is made up of several hundred acres of grazing land. A developer purchased the property. Because the adjacent land had their well drilled prior to the time our well was drilled gives the developer the right to pump water at historical levels. This developer overestimated the amount of water and plans to pump enough water to supply his development with water. His development would have several hundred homes or around 1800 homes. Pumping at this level will endanger our already scarce water resources in our small valley. One theory suggests that pumping at the rates the developer wanted would have drained the aquifer that supplies the whole valley. We have banded together in our subdivision and hired water adjudication lawyers to fight the developer. The developer initially suggested that our subdivision hook up to city water. United Water will not run lines into our subdivision to serve just 22 homes. Also the cost of watering five acres at United Water rates would bankrupt the whole subdivision. We have now signed a preliminary agreement that allows the developer to pump water at a rate that a grazing operation would pump rather than at a rate a farmer would pump. To the developer this means that he will need to subsidize his water with water from the city or United Water. To us this means that our meager well water pumping will continue to provide enough water to survive on. The only way we got any leverage in this situation was for the community to band together to fight a developer with deep pockets and connections with the city council.
http://library.findlaw.com/1999/Jan/1/241492.html
Obama Water Rights case

Family law is the set of laws that involve marriage, child custody, and other issues arising in personal relationships. One major law that affected marriage was DOMA. The Defense of Marriage Act stated that the states are not required to acknowledge a marriage between same sex couples. It also says that " 'marriage' means the legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife, and the word 'spouse' refers only to a person of the opposite sex who is a husband or a wife." I know a lot about this law since I researched it for my senior project. Here is what it actually says. I am inclined to disbelieve the author of the book about his interpretation on the law.
DOMA