Fred A. Seaton, Individually and as Secretary of the Interior v. The Texas Company, John Snyder v. The Texas Company

This is a close and difficult case, but I would sustain the Secretary’s action. As I read the majority opinion, it holds, not that the Secretary is without power to correct his own inadvertent administrative errors, but that in doing so in this particular case he did so arbitrarily.

The Secretary’s action had some rational basis even though it was one which we, as judges, might not have taken in the first instance, had we been in his place. But it does not seem to me our function to repudiate administrative acts because we might take a different view of the equities or because the…