DECISIONS RELATING TO THE PUBLIC LANDS. BOUNTY LAND WARRANT-ASSIGNMENT. OPINION. The Commissioner of the General Land Office may properly determine, in advance of location, whether the assignment of a bounty. land warrant has been made according to the prescribed form and regulations. Assistant Attorney-General Van Decanter to the Secretary of the Interior, (E. F. B.) January 3, 1899. I am in receipt, by reference, of a communication from the Commissioner of the General Land Office asking whether he has authority to pass upon the sufficiency of an assignment of a bounty land warrant before it has been presented for location, in view of the following instructions to registers and receivers in the circular of February 15, 1896: To avoid as far as possible complications of land titles arising in consequence of the location of fraudulent or imperfectly assigned warrants, registers and receivers are. peremptorily enjoined to refuse all warrants presented when the assignments thereof do not accord in every essential particular with the rules herein prescribed; and in all cases when the question of title is in doubt they must decline to receive the warrants until the holders thereof have submitted the same to this office for examination, and have obtained a favorable decision thereon. (27 L. D., 218.) There is no conflict between these instructions and the practice which has prevailed in the General Land Office for the past fifty years, of determining in advance of location whether assignments of bounty land warrants are made in accordance with the form and pursuant to the regulations prescribed by the Commissioner of the General Land Office. These warrants are declared by statute to be assignable "by deed or instrument of writing made and executed according to such form and pursuant to such regulations as may be prescribed by the Commissioner of the General Land Office" (U. S. Rev. Stat., section 2414), and there is no reason why the Commissioner may not, in advance of location, determine whether the assignment has been made according to the form and in pursuance of the regulations prescribed by him. Approved: C. N. BLISS, 12781-VOL 28- -1 |