ABSTRACT
Few laws excite as much passion among both defenders and detractors as the Mining Law. Mere mention of the subject stirs combative juices in the mineral industry, environmental groups, and among some politicians and federal resource policy cognoscenti. Though many regard it as a sorry anachronism, influential interests are swift to rise fiercely in its defense. Nearly all of the public debate, however, is over just one part of the Law rather than its entiretyironically, the very part Senator McDougall wanted to retain while jettisoning the rest. Simply stated, what preoccupies friend and foe alike is the idea of free, self-initiated access to the federal lands. To the friend of the Law, it is free enterprise in action: the private prospector matched against nature's cleverness in concealing her mineral riches-an elemental struggle, a battle of wits in which government has no place, except after the fact. To the foe, free access is an invitation to abuse, a single-minded emphasis that at best complicates and at worst destroys other equally deserving uses of the federal lands, and thus is plainly out of step with modern values.
