In the 1928 case of Herkness v. Irion, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of plaintiff Edward M. Herkness, who challenged Louisiana's oil and gas conservation laws as unconstitutional under the Fourteenth Amendment’s due process clause. The state law required that all oil producers restrict their production to a certain amount per day based on acreage owned or controlled by them, regardless of well capacity or productivity potential; this was intended to prevent waste and protect property rights within common reservoirs of oil and gas. Herkness argued that these restrictions deprived him unjustly from his right to produce more than what was allowed by law despite having wells with greater productive capacity than others in his area. The court agreed with Herkness' argument stating that while states have power to regulate natural resources for prevention against wasteful practices, such regulations must not be arbitrary nor discriminatory but should bear reasonable relation towards achieving its purpose without infringing upon individual rights protected under Constitution.

In the dissenting opinion for Herkness v. Irion, it was argued that the majority's decision failed to adequately consider the rights of private property owners in relation to natural resources found on their land. The dissenters contended that under Louisiana law, a landowner has exclusive right to minerals beneath his or her property and this should not be superseded by state regulation without proper compensation. They also disagreed with the majority's interpretation of "waste" in oil production, arguing that economic waste is different from physical waste and should not be regulated in the same way. Furthermore, they believed that if there were concerns about conservation or public welfare due to excessive drilling or extraction activities, these issues could have been addressed through other means such as taxation rather than infringing upon private property rights.