CONSTITUTIONAL INTERPRETATIONS

By statute, Alaska requires the “forfeiture” of an aircraft used to transport alcoholic beverages to small  Alaskan villages away from the state’s interconnected road system,  in violation of the village’s local option law against alcoholic beverages. See Alaska Statutes (“AS”) §§ 04.16.220(a)(3) and (i)(1); and AS § 04..11.499(a) (2012 editions). On December 1, 2026, the United States Supreme Court is scheduled to consider whether that aircraft “forfeiture” requirement violates the “Excessive Fines Clause” of the United States Constitution, when the aircraft is worth $95,000 and the alcoholic beverages transported in violation of the law consisted only of one six pack of beer. See Jouppi v. Alaska, Sup.Ct. docket no. 25-246.

The Excessive Fines Clause reads, in its entirety, as follows:

Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

U.S. Constitution, Eighth Amendment.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines a “fine,” as that word was commonly used when the Eighth Amendment was adopted in 1791,  as a “A sum of money exacted as the penalty for an offence, esp. by a court of law or other authority.” See “Fine, N. (1), Sense II.6.c.” Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford UP, September 2026, https://doi.org/10.1093/OED/5387560100. A forfeited aircraft, or any other vehicle forfeited in the year 1791, is not a “fine”. The forfeited vehicle is not a “sum of money exacted as the penalty for an offense.” Under the Alaskan statutes at issue, a guilty owner/pilot of the forfeited aircraft cannot get the airplane back by paying the state for it.

Article III, Section 2 of the Constitution limits the jurisdiction of federal courts to “Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, . . . .[or other federal law]”. With no “fines” at stake, this six-pack-of-beer case does not arise “under this Constitution or any other federal law. Accordingly, the Court should dismiss the Jouppi Case from its docket for lack of jurisdiction, without prejudice to any further litigation that the law of Alaska might allow over the guilty pilot’s and owner’s use and possession of an expensive aircraft he illegally used.

/s/ Dan D. Rhea