I don’t disagree with most of what you say.
The land, or most of it, was available for sale for a century or so. Nobody bought it.
That’s very different from claiming it was federal perfidy that led to the land not being sold.
As I’ve repeatedly said, the debate over what development should be permitted and what land should be sold is a policy debate.
The state claiming that because it disagrees with the land use decisions of Congress it therefore acquires prescriptive title is an enormous jump of illogic, IMO.
Did any other state, except HI, ever get title to its land at statehood? Then why does UT believe it has that right?
If the original terms of the statehood act were to be reverted to, the feds would start selling land to private buyers, with 5% of the sale price going to the state. That’s very different indeed from the state acquiring title to 100% of the land for itself.
Well....it's a good going in position.
Lawyers always make outrageous claims to start the negotiation.
But it has a root in the reality of the settlement. The original colonies - the States - would not have agreed that by making a federal compact they were turning over their land to a managerial elite, or even that they shared a collectivist notion of national ownership.
The federal union was a mutual cooperation society of sovereign people and their respective states.
That upon Statehood the people of Utah agreed to let the federals sell off the dirt which had been Territorial land to collect some cash was of course normal back then. But upon sale, they expected the land and the populace would then be part of the State, and eventually the federal interest would be mostly extinguished.
But times and beliefs changed. Now we have a collectivist federal government which holds State sovereignty in contempt - the ultimate result of Lincoln's nonsense arguments about contractual rights in regards to the Union.
So Utah's arguments can be seen in an Originalist light - if you aren't going to sell the land to make some money, it's ours. That's why we agreed to play the game, you said nothing about using it as a museum.
Contracts have intent, right?
The Federal government did not create Utah. The Mormons did. They were there before the Mexican war, and they did indeed settle it. There were no Mexicans there, only a few Spaniards down in the mountains of New Mexico (500 miles away), and certainly no Federal troops or outposts.
That's why they went there. No Nauvoos. They still remember.
So over time the concept of who it all really belongs to - or should - has clearly changed, but mostly on the federal side. Maybe Utah should have given the feds a time limit to sell the land, with a reversion clause. Guess they weren't in a position to do so in 1894.
But the United States are returning to an earlier notion of self determination and their relationship to the federal union - this demand being one expression of that I think.
Some of the claims may seem a stretch but considered in a historical light, not so much.
It will be, as you said, a policy debate. The one that Clinton couldnt be bothered with when he pre-emptively abused (again) his powers.
Essentially a re-balancing of the relationship over the land, as the document referenced noted.