CHAPTER 16 OPENING REMARKS

• Jurisdiction: United States

Mining Exploration Technology for Lawyers and Landmen
(Apr 1980)
CHAPTER 16
OPENING REMARKS
John C. Lacy
DeConcini McDonald Brammer Yetwin & Lacy
Tucson, Arizona

Those who have sought to find and extract minerals have historically rejected the traditional legal structure. During the Middle Ages separate miners' courts emerged throughout the far reaches of the Germanic kingdoms and under the laws of the Spanish Empire. This attitude was brought to the California gold field by the argonauts from throughout the world who, along with exercising their own brand of justice, also made sure that all disputes were settled by their fellow miners through arbitration or by the vote of their peers at public meetings. The unspoken implication was that a formal legal system was not welcome in the mining camps. In fact, in the regulations of several of the early California districts, lawyers were specifically prohibited from practice.

The reason for this distrust of lawyers and their legal system is probably a combination of tribal tradition and the technical basis of the mining profession. The miner has a special status, however, as being one of the few segments of society that has been able to have a direct impact on the basic laws that defined their rights in mineral lands.

The miners started in this country by running their own courts in the western gold fields and ultimately wrote the

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1866 Mining Law that eventually became a part of the General Mining Law of 1872 that by and large remains the law governing hard rock mineral rights.

This law was based on mineral technology, and the laws...