In an email Tuesday, University of Utah law professor John Ruple agreed with some of the governor’s sentiment, telling Utah News Dispatch there is room for improvement when it comes to how federal land is managed.
“However, the U.S. Constitution is clear that Congress, not the individual states, makes decisions about our federal public lands,” said Ruple, a research professor of law at the university’s S.J. Quinney College of Law, and director of the Wallace Stegner Center for Land, Resources and the Environment’s Law and Policy Program.
To rule in Utah’s favor, Ruple said the Supreme Court would have to reinterpret longstanding constitutional provisions, upsetting “150 years of settled Supreme Court law and destabilizing land ownership throughout the West.”
“That’s a big lift. I can’t help but wonder whether a less adversarial approach would have been more
Utah asked the U.S. Supreme Court if it's unconstitutional for the Bureau of Land Management to control 18.5 million acres of public land.
utahnewsdispatch.com