In the 1922 case of McKelvey et al. v. United States, the Supreme Court ruled on a dispute involving mining claims in Alaska. The plaintiffs, McKelvey and others, had staked mining claims under an 1866 law that allowed individuals to claim up to five acres of non-mineral public land for milling purposes if they also held a valid mineral claim nearby. However, these lands were later incorporated into Chugach National Forest by presidential proclamation in 1907 and then withdrawn from all forms of appropriation under public-land laws by Congress in 1910. The court upheld the government's right to withdraw these lands from private entry despite existing mining claims because it found no evidence that any valuable minerals existed on them at the time they were claimed or when they were subsequently withdrawn from private entry. It concluded that since there was no discovery of valuable minerals within their limits prior to withdrawal as required by law for such claims to be valid, those who made them acquired no vested rights against subsequent governmental action withdrawing unappropriated public lands.

In the dissenting opinion for McKelvey et al. v. United States, Justice Holmes argued that the majority's decision was based on a misinterpretation of the law and an overreach of judicial power. He contended that it is not within the court's purview to determine whether or not a contract has been fulfilled; rather, this should be left to administrative bodies specifically tasked with overseeing such matters. In his view, if there were any ambiguities in how these bodies interpreted their duties under said contracts, they should have been resolved by Congress - not by courts stepping outside their jurisdictional bounds. Furthermore, he disagreed with the majority’s interpretation of “mineral lands” as including oil and gas reserves; instead arguing that historically and legally these resources had always been considered separate from hard mineral deposits like coal or iron ore.