16 U.S.C. § 472
Section 472 · Laws affecting national forest lands
Amended 1 time on record
Applied in 28 court decisions — leading case Sierra Club v. Morton (1972)
Most recently applied in Ark Initiative v. Tidwell (August 2014)
How often courts cite this section
Court decisions citing this, by year.Markers show enactment, consequential amendments, and circuit splits over this section — watch for a citation surge after a change or a disagreement. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.
The Secretary of the Department of Agriculture shall execute or cause to be executed all laws affecting public lands reserved under the provisions of section 471 1 of this title, or sections supplemental to and amendatory thereof, after such lands have been so reserved, excepting such laws as affect the surveying, prospecting, locating, appropriating, entering, relinquishing, reconveying, certifying, or patenting of any of such lands.
Editorial notes U.S. Code · Office of the Law Revision Counsel
References in Text
Section 471 of this title, referred to in text, was in the original a reference to section 24 of act Mar. 3, 1891, ch. 561, 26 Stat. 1103, and was repealed by Pub. L. 94–579, title VII, §704(a), Oct. 21, 1976, 90 Stat. 2792.
Codification
Words “subject to the provisions for national forests established under subdivision (b) of section 471 of this title,” which had been inserted by the original codifiers of the 1926 ed. of the Code, have been omitted because of the repeal of section 471 of this title by Pub. L. 94–579.