Opinion of the Court
2014). Legislators (and other drafters) find the word “useful” when “it is necessary to establish a legal fiction,” either by “‘deeming’ something to be what it is not” or by “‘deeming’ something not to be what it is.” Ibid. (quoting G. C. Thornton, Legislative Drafting 99 (4th ed. 1996)). The fiction in Section 103(c) involves considering certain lands actually within the new national parks as instead without them. As a matter of geography, both public and non-public lands fall inside those parks’ boundaries. But as a matter of law, only public lands would be viewed as doing so. All non-public lands (again, including waters) would be “deemed,” abracadabra-style, outside Alaska’s system units.[1]
The effect of that exclusion, as Section 103(c)’s second sentence affirms, is to exempt non-public lands, including waters, from the Park Service’s ordinary regulatory authority. Recall that the Organic Act pegs that authority to system units. See supra, at 8. The Service may issue rules thought “necessary or proper” for “System units.” 54 U. S. C. §100751(a). And more pertinently here, the Service may prescribe rules about activities on “water located within System units.” §100751(b). Absent Section 103(c), those grants of power enable the Service to administer even non-federally owned waters or lands inside national parks. See supra, at 8. But add Section 103(c), and the equation changes. Now, according to that section’s first sentence, non-federally owned waters and lands inside system units (on a map) are declared outside them (for the
- ↑ Consistent with that approach, Congress left out non-public lands in calculating the acreage of every new or expanded system unit. Sections 201 and 202 of ANILCA, in describing those units, state the acreage of only their public lands. See, e. g., §410hh(1) (providing that Aniakchak National Preserve would “contain[] approximately [367,000] acres of public lands”); §410hh–1(3) (providing that Denali National Park would grow “by the addition of an area containing approximately [2,426,000] acres of public land”).
