Nineteenth-century federal law gave away vast public lands to promote private resource exploitation

Evidence

Federal public land law, for instance, historically promoted its resource exploitation goals by conferring private property rights in natural resources to those individuals and private entities that made sufficient showing of their willingness and ability to develop the resource. Thus, the Homestead Act of 1862 conferred hundreds of thousands of acres of public lands to homesteaders; the General Mining Law of 1872 gave millions of dollars worth of mineral rights in public lands to miners who discovered valuable mineral deposits in commercial quantities; and a series of nineteenthcentury federal railroad laws granted over 100 million acres of public lands to railroad companies in exchange for their construction of railroads that would further open up lands for settlement and economic exploitation. — Richard J. Lazarus, The Making of Environmental Law, 791

Categorization

• XREF: This is the land-distribution history beneath current public lands and environmental justice debates in the polyad. — connects to: Interior’s power rests on federal ownership of nearly a third of the nation’s lands — Richard J. Lazarus, The Making of Environmental Law, 783; 1970s resource laws shifted federal oversight of western public lands toward conservation. — Richard J. Lazarus, The Making of Environmental Law, 428; The Homestead Act marked the end of using public land to raise federal revenue — Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law, 2394 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• The Homestead Act marked the end of using public land to raise federal revenue #expands (0.82) — Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law, 2394