Congress has given the president the power to create national monuments on public lands. Those monuments are overseen by the Department of the Interior. But Congress has also charged the agency with managing a wide array of other public lands, sometimes for purposes of development instead of preservation. This week,we highlight petitions that ask the court to consider whether Barack Obama had the authority to expand a national monument in the forests of Oregon into land overseen by the Interior Department. At issue in this case are two separate laws. The first law, the Antiquities Act of 1906, gives the president the power to designate areas of land as national monuments and protect them from development. …In the second law, Congress directed the Interior Department to enforce sustainable harvesting of timber in a broad swath of federally owned forest in Oregon, with instructions to ensure both a “permanent forest” and an economic benefit to residents.