Abstract
Water law in the United States has facilitated agricultural, industrial, and urban growth through the interrelated processes of resource privatization and commodification. Resource instrumentalism and the ideological sanctity of private property are the normative orders underlying the extant body of water law, at least since the mid- 19th century. Legislatures and courts have been much concerned with resolving the contradictions between and within these processes and ideologies, the outgrowth of which has been the development and use of several legal approaches that have fostered economic growth, while paying lip service to the form of private property.