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Show 750 HISTORY OF PUBLIC LAND LAW DEVELOPMENT were not answered in a very satisfactory way. The District of Columbia Court of Appeals reversed the lower court which granted the relief sought. The majority opinion seemed to feel that the Secretary's order did in fact constitute a withdrawal and that the Leasing Act in no way limited the discretion which the Secretary had under the Pickett Act. The court argued that the Leasing Act was no more mandatory than the 1872 Mining Law in this respect and that withdrawals under the latter statute had, of course, been susained.365 On certiorari to the Supreme Court,30'6 Mr. Justice McReynolds, affirming the decision, placed the case more on the ground that Section 13 of the Leasing Act could reasonably be interpreted to give the Secretary discretion in issuing permits. The court did, however, feel constrained to add that this interpretation was entirely consistent with the Secretary's "general powers over the public lands as guardian of the people" and also the fact that he did have the right to withdraw public lands from private appropriation under the Midwest decision.367 The public domain was reopened again to oil leases on April 4, 1932, but prospecting permits were issued subject to certain conservation restrictions relating to unitiza-tion and prorationing. Although the system of prospecting permits was abolished in 1935, it has been held that the Secretary has similar discretion in issuing leases.368 The Conflict Between Two Regimes: Location and Leasing It was inevitable that the two systems- location and leasing-would eventually 385 Wilbur v. United States ex rel. Barton, 46 F.2d 217 (D.C. App. 1930) . 386 United States ex rel. McLennan v. Wilbur, 283 U.S. 414 (1931) . 3(17 United States v. Midwest Oil Co., 236 U.S. 459 (1915) discussed in Part 2, n. 271 and text. ^ United States ex rel. Jordan v. Ickes, 142 F.2d 152 (D.C. App. 1944) . conflict. That the collision was postponed until the early 1950's is in itself remarkable. The story behind this is at once romantic and highly legalistic. The first adjective is used to describe the uranium boom. The last is meant to convey a kaleidoscopic picture of legislation which is so boring that even lawyers shudder when perchance they encounter almost any volume of the proceedings of the Rocky Mountain Mineral Law Institute. No attempt will be made here to wallow in the implications of either term. But, like it or not, "multiple surface use" and "multiple mineral development" are as much a part of the modern law of mining as were "extralateral" and "interlimital" in a better day. A dubious legacy of World War II was the atomic bomb, which, apart from what one may think about the morality of its use, was something of a windfall for the public miner. As we have intimated, there were certain secondary benefits to the legal profession. The demand for fissionable source materials after the war and the urgency of a government monopoly in them prompted the enactment of the Atomic Energy Act of 1946 which, in sweeping terms, reserved all such ores in public domain land to the United States and required that they also be reserved in any mineral patent.369 How then could an honest miner make a location based upon the discovery of uranium ore-much less obtain a patent which would be of any value? The question was never answered although one writer reports an unpublished departmental decision holding that the reservation invalidated any mining location based solely upon a discovery of uranium.370 There was also some indication that a patentee whose location was based on nonfissionable materials could remove the fissionable materials de- 396 60 Stat. 755, 760 (1946). 370 Note, 4 Utah L. Rev. 239, 251, n. 122 (1954) . |
