Opinion ID: 170350
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Necessity Clause of Cession Act and Congressional Judgment

Text: Fields' argument under the Cession Act ultimately rests on the premise that if federal jurisdiction were restricted to matters necessary for the administration, control, and protection of [national forest] lands, Cession Act, ch. 42, § 2, it would not encompass the murder offenses for which he has been prosecuted. He insists that this necessity clause does not authorize the general application of federal criminal law, and particularly federal offenses against persons rather than property, because the administration, control, and protection of national forests does not extend to anything beyond the land itself. While we do not necessarily share this cramped view of what is entailed in the proper administration, control, and protection of the national forests, we reject Fields' argument on the more fundamental basis that this condition on the exercise of ceded federal authority is, as the Cession Act provides, to be applied as appropriate in [ Congress's ] judgment, id. (emphasis added), not in the judgment of the parties or the court. Nearly identical necessity clauses were used in the state cession Acts at issue in the Raffield and Gabrion cases relied on by the government for its general position on concurrent jurisdiction. We find Gabrion 's treatment of the clause especially instructive. It did not analyze the meaning of the terms used in the clause to resolve whether, in its view, the function of the federal criminal law at issue fell within their scope. Rather, it held that the clause as a whole imposed only such constraint as Congress recognized, because the state did not (as Oklahoma here did not) reserve the authority to second guess the United States as to what prosecutions it might consider necessary for the administration, control and protection of the national forest lands. Gabrion, 2006 WL 2473978, at . Gabrion thus concludes, as we do, that the necessity clause does not require an independently confirmed administrative need before federal authority may be exercised, but only Congress's judgment that such a need warrants legislative action. We are aware of no contrary authority, nor has Fields suggested any, to undercut this plain reading of the language in the Cession Act. Consequently, we hold that Congress's extension of federal criminal authority to all lands over which the United States has concurrent jurisdiction in 18 U.S.C. § 7(3), and its explicit application of the murder statute to this same range of lands in 18 U.S.C. § 1111(b), did not exceed the territorial jurisdiction ceded by Oklahoma to the federal government over property acquired as national forest land.