Abstract
There is no greater threat to our public lands than energy dominance. The 1906 Antiquities Act gave presidents the power to proclaim national monuments on public lands, and today the federal government protects over 11 million acres as national monuments. President Trump plans to revoke and shrink monument protections so that these lands can be used for oil, gas, and mineral drilling, destroying cultural artifacts with detrimental impacts to air, water, and land. The Antiquities Act does not give the president the power to revoke or shrink national monuments designated by prior presidents; the Act reserves this power solely to Congress. Using statutory interpretation and separation of powers principles, this Article argues that the president lacks a revocation or modification power—addressing argumentsreaching the alternative conclusion—and that such action by the president is reviewable by the judiciary. Although monument revocation or modification by the president is unlawful, there is currently no established standard for judicial review of monument revocations, leaving those harmed by these unlawful acts without redress and the courts struggling to enforce the law against the president. This Article proposes and applies a three-part test for judicial review of presidential monument revocations and modifications based on existing case law and constitutional principles, demarcating clear exceptions for presidential action that can be raised as an affirmative defense and protecting the separation of powers while ensuring that the president is not above the law.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Lillian A. Bourne,
Everything the Light Touches is Not Your Kingdom: Understanding the Statutory Silence in the Antiquities Act to Restrict Presidential Power,
66
Nat. Res. J.
1
(2026).
Available at:
https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/nrj/vol66/iss1/3
