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Show LEGAL ASPECTS OF MINERAL RESOURCES EXPLOITATION 757 what laymen like to call "lawyer's law." Second, several areas of conflict have been rendered more or less obsolete by recent Supreme Court decisions. A few of the principal differences will, however, be noted briefly here. A great deal of ink has been consumed in recent years denning what constitutes a discovery of valuable minerals under the Mining Law of 1872. To the industry, there was no greater heresy than the suggestion that there ought to be some reasonable relationship between the commercial value of the mineral (including nonmetallics) and the validity of a mining claim. Whatever may be said about the stare decisis aspect of the controversy, it must be noted that the Supreme Court has recently held, without dissent, that commercial marketability is indeed an aspect of "discovery."409 Viewed in the light of conditions at the time of the enactment of the mining law in 1872, this is not without justification. Slightly irrelevant, perhaps, is the fact that in 1872 a miner was required to spend $100 annually on assessment work to prevent a claim from being relocated. Considering the fact that his average hourly wage in 1890 was 20 cents, a "prudent" miner would think twice before spending $100 on surface development if his mineral had no commercial value in the community.410 The Supreme Court did not, of course, consider this type of evidence in construing the statute but preferred to place its decision on the ground that in fact there had been no departure from the traditional definition of "discovery" in recognizing the element of marketability. Another source of disagreement has been the extent to which the Department of the Interior could cancel by administrative action oil and gas leases which had been erroneously issued in violation of applicable leasing regulations or laws. Although a great many problems remain in this area,411 some were foreclosed by a Supreme Court decision in 1964 upholding the power of cancellation in connection with violations existing at the time of the issuance of the lease.412 Another latent problem has been the extent to which the Mining Law of 1872 should be modified to deal with 20th-century mining problems. A great many articles have appeared with suggestions which would either promote the objectives of the industry413 or the government.414 Strangely enough, it has even become fashionable415 for the industry to suggest that in some respects the mining law is obsolete. To our knowledge, the mining people have not yet suggested that leasing is a preferable alternative. It is hoped that some of the observations in earlier parts of this discussion may be helpful in making this basic policy decision. Other studies which have been undertaken for the Public Land Law Review Commis- 409 United States v. Coleman, 88 Sup. Ct. 1327 (1968) . 410 The observation is made in O'Callaghan, The Mining Law and Multiple Use, 7 Nat. Res. J. 242, 248 (1967) . 411 See Trelease, Bloomenthal and Geraud, Cases on Natural Resources 654-55 (1965) . 412 Boesche v. Udall, 373 U.S. 472 (1963) . 413 For some of the more recent, see Hansen, Why a Location System for Hard Minerals? 13 Rocky Mt. Min. L. Inst. 1 (1967) ; Ladendorff, Suggestions for Congressional Action Relating to the General Mining Law, 11 Rocky Mt. Min. L. Inst. 441 (1966) ; Twitty, Amendments to the Mining Loots, 8 Ariz. L. Rev. 63 (1966) . On Federal oil and gas leasing, see Christy, The Future of the Mineral Leasing Act - Suggestions for Consideration in Amendments to the Mineral Leasing Act of February 25, 1920, 11 Rocky Mt. Min. L. Inst. 369 (1966) . «4 peari) Projected Impact of Pending Proposals to Review the Mining Laws, 9 Rocky Mt. Min. L. Inst. 1 (1964). 415 The term is borrowed from Sherwood and Greer, Mining Law in a Nuclear Age: The Wyoming Example, 3 Land and Water L. Rev. 1, 3 (1968) . |