Opinion ID: 1428788
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Origin of Section 6(i)

Text: As we have already explained in part IIB of this opinion, the restrictive language in section 6(i) was derived from the 1927 School Lands Act. [18] In Lewis, we discussed the School Lands Act in another context: In 1955, the Territory of Alaska, through its legislature, provided for a constitutional convention. Elected delegates adopted a Constitution on February 5, 1956, which was ratified by the people of Alaska on April 24, 1956. This Constitution adopted by the people of Alaska served as the basis for subsequent petitions to Congress for statehood and constituted an offer to accept the privileges and responsibilities of that status in accordance with its terms. Throughout the process of drafting the Constitution and its adoption, there was considerable public controversy surrounding the issue of federal control over Alaska's power to dispose of its mineral resources. In statehood legislation for other states, Congress had limited land grants to non-mineral lands. Public lands, which were known to be chiefly valuable for commercial mineral production at the time of the grants, were retained in federal ownership for management and disposition under a theoretically unified system of federal mineral law. In part to avoid the litigation over titles which had resulted from this policy, Congress passed the School Lands Act of 1927, 43 U.S.C. § 870. This act extended the original statehood land grants to embrace lands mineral in character. These additional grants, however, were made subject to a mineral alienation condition which prohibited state disposal of land without a reservation of minerals and permitted a forfeiture action instituted by the Attorney General on behalf of the United States in the event of such disposal [43 U.S.C. § 870(b)]. Although the constitutions of most states were written after passage by Congress of the relevant enabling acts, Alaska's Constitution was drafted in the absence of a pre-existing act. While the delegates were therefore unsure of the particular restrictive language which might be chosen by Congress, they were aware of the history of federal control over state disposition of mineral lands and the likelihood that the United States would insist on retaining its usual powers. To many of the delegates and the people of the state, these restrictions were unpopular. 559 P.2d at 636 (footnotes omitted). Thus, we see in the School Lands Act language echoed fifty-one years later in section 6(i) of the Alaska Statehood Act: a requirement that grantee states reserve the mineral interest when disposing of granted lands, and a provision allowing grantee states to dispose of minerals only by lease. Implicit in this quotation from Lewis are several points which must be emphasized. First, prior to the enactment of the School Lands Act, the statehood land grants of many western states did not include certain school lands sections which were known to be mineral in character at the time for vesting. [19] Andrus v. Utah, 446 U.S. 500, 508, 100 S.Ct. 1803, 64 L.Ed.2d 458, 465 (1980); see also 3 American Law of Mining § 60.06[2], at 60-11-13. Second, if lands vested which were in fact of mineral character, but whose mineral character was not known at the time of vesting, the state owned the lands and minerals contained therein. United States v. Wyoming, 331 U.S. at 443, 67 S.Ct. at 1321, 91 L.Ed. at 1593. Third, in United States v. Sweet, 245 U.S. 563, 572-73, 38 S.Ct. 193, 195, 62 L.Ed. 473, 481 (1918), the Supreme Court held that congressional grants of school lands to a state conveyed no title to lands known to be of mineral character, even if the grant did not expressly reserve such mineral lands to the federal government. In other words, states received title to lands of known mineral character only when Congress expressly granted mineral lands. Finally, the School Lands Act of 1927 served as an express congressional grant of school lands of known mineral character. Most importantly, the term mineral lands as used in the School Lands Act [20] is a term of art, and refers to the time that the mineral character of the lands was appreciated, not to the ultimately discovered nature of the lands. [21] See also Slaughter Memorandum infra p. 340.