# Commemorative Works Act **Type:** Federal law (Pub. L. 99-652, codified at 40 U.S.C. §§ 8901–8909) **Enacted:** 1986; substantially amended by the Commemorative Works Clarification and Revision Act of 2003 ## Summary The statute that governs how memorials get built in the nation's capital. A commemorative work may be established on National Park Service or GSA land in the District of Columbia and its environs **"only as specifically authorized by law"** — that is, by an act of Congress, not by executive decision. The Act was passed in 1986 to stop the ad hoc cluttering of Washington's monumental core and to protect its designed sightlines; witnesses at the 1986 hearings specifically cited the visual axis between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington Cemetery as what the law existed to protect. ## Key Provisions **The three zones (§ 8908).** The Act divides the capital into the **Reserve** (the cross-axis of the Mall — closed to all new memorials since the 2003 amendments), **Area I** (the monumental core, per a map Congress wrote into the statute, No. 869/86501 B), and **Area II** (everything else). **The Area I two-step.** A memorial in Area I requires *two* congressional approvals: the general authorization every memorial needs, plus a second law ratifying the Area I location within **150 days** of the Interior Secretary's notification — and only after a determination that the subject is of "preeminent historical and lasting significance to the United States." **Advisory machinery.** The National Capital Memorial Advisory Commission advises the Secretary of the Interior and the GSA Administrator on proposals; the Commission of Fine Arts and the National Capital Planning Commission review designs. None of this substitutes for the act of Congress. **The track record.** Since 1986, every memorial placed on federal land in the capital under the Act — more than forty — has come to Congress first. The World War II Memorial required two acts of Congress before a construction permit issued. The precedent runs deeper still: the first federal memorial, an equestrian statue of George Washington, was approved by the Continental Congress in 1783. ## KB Significance **The Independence Arch confrontation.** The Act is the central legal obstacle to [[Donald Trump]]'s [[Independence Arch]] at Memorial Circle — a site inside Area I. No authorizing law exists; the only authority the National Park Service documents invoke is an executive order, which is not an act of Congress. On June 15, 2026, [[Angus King]], [[Martin Heinrich]], [[Jeff Merkley]], [[Jared Huffman]], and two House colleagues — the ranking members with jurisdiction over capital monuments — told Interior Secretary [[Doug Burgum]] the project is one "the NPS has no power to build," citing the Act, a Congressional Research Service analysis reaching the same conclusion, and a companion 1912 statute (40 U.S.C. § 8106) that separately bars any building on federal parkland in the District "without express authority of Congress." **A structural check with personal teeth.** Unlike many separation-of-powers constraints the vault tracks, this one carries individual liability: the June 2026 letter warned that officials who order unauthorized construction act "in their personal capacities, not the sovereign's" — ultra vires action outside sovereign immunity — and that obligating funds for unauthorized construction risks Anti-Deficiency Act sanctions that run against the responsible officer personally, while contractors' derivative immunity fails where authority was never validly conferred. **The nullification question.** If a president can place a 250-foot personal monument on federal memorial land by executive order alone, the Act's core purpose — congressional control over what the capital commemorates — is a dead letter. The arch fight is therefore a live test of whether a 1986 statute constrains a 2026 executive, running in parallel with the vault's other stress tests of paper checks ([[War Powers Resolution]], [[Power of the Purse]]). ## See Also - [[Independence Arch]] — the live Area I confrontation - [[National Park Service]] — the administering agency - [[America 250]] — the commemorative frame the arch claims - [[Separation of Powers]] — the principle at stake