Well, it looks like we’re talking about precedent, rather than Constitutional interpretation, here. But in times past, nobody thought of the federal government as the threat it is today, so I’m not sure this issue was ever contested on Constitutional grounds.
I find your interpretation of what a “Territory” is hard to swallow. According to your interpretation, “Territory” could mean any land with a State not previously held. I don’t believe a state or land within a state is a “Territory.” The traditional use of the word “Territory” is United States’ land that is not a State. It looks like the feds sold the “public domain” land states to individuals in the Ohio case and afterwards. At the time there was probably no objection so probably no one raised an issue. But I see no constitutional justification for doing so, unless it was part of the deal the feds made with the state.
Even if it was part of the agreement for a state to become a state, unless the state or the people allowed the transactions to take place they way they did, again, there is no constitutional authority for the feds to do so. I would say that in the initial transfer of a territory into a state, the Constitution gives the feds power to negotiate the initial agreement. But after a certain point in time after the initial transfer and creation of a state, I see nothing in the Constitution that allows the feds to hold onto land within a state without constitutional justification, historical record notwithstanding.
Probably time to revisit the whole issue and clarify state’s rights vs. federal power regarding lands within a state because now there is an issue and ANYTHING the federal government does is a constitutional issue.
I have no problem revisiting the issue.
But there simply is nothing in the Constitution that can be interpreted to mean that title to land owned by the United States passes to the individual state within a given time if not sold to individuals.
The land was acquired by the money and/or blood of “the people of the United States,” not the people of Nevada or Washington state.
I see this POV fairly frequently on FR. If there is some policy we dislike, it must be “unconstitutional.” To my mind that’s a leftist viewpoint. Not all bad things are unconstitutional. Any attempt to make it be so requires some body, usually a court, to “interpret” the Constitution out of its plain meaning.
As a side issue, a lot of the rural inhabitants of these states assume, without any real evidence I can see, that state ownership would be vastly better for them than federal ownership.
Might be the case in most of the Rocky Mountain states. Really doubt it would be in the Pacific states, in which the state governments are even more liberal and enviro than the feds.