Court Opinion

ID: 9792850
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 02:38:02.788503+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:00:34.113897
License: Public Domain

BURKE, Justice,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent.
At the time of the Alaska Constitutional Convention, delegate Fischer expressed concern about the language of Article I, Section 5. He asked his fellow delegates, “I wonder if the statement in this sentence might not open this up to an infringement of freedom of speech through legislation by indirect means?” 2 Proceedings of the Alaska Constitutional Convention, 1305 (January 5,1956). Delegate Fischer’s question has now been answered. The answer, unfortunately, is “yes.”
In language that the majority itself calls “express and unambiguous,” Article I, Section 5, guarantees to every person in Alaska the right to “freely speak, write and publish on all subjects, being responsible for the abuse of that right.” Absent some evidence of abuse, I fail to agree that Messerli can be punished for his refusal to report the additional information required by the Alaska Campaign Disclosure Act. That requirement, as I see it, directly infringes upon the right guaranteed him by Article I, Section 5, without compelling justification.
The majority justifies its holding under the same rationale used by the United States Supreme Court in upholding similar reporting requirements under the First Amendment. That rationale, I believe, is faulty in several respects.
The most important of these is that it ignores both the history of our own country and the role that anonymous expression has played in the progress of mankind. “Persecuted groups and sects from time to time throughout history have been able to criticize oppressive practices and laws either anonymously or not at all.” Talley v. California, 362 U.S. 60, 64, 80 S.Ct. 536, 538, 4 L.Ed.2d 559, 563 (1960). Moreover, “it is plain that anonymity has sometimes been assumed for the most constructive pur*90poses.” 362 U.S. at 65, 80 S.Ct. at 539, 4 L.Ed.2d at 563.1

. The importance of anonymous political expression in this country is amply demonstrated by the debates that surrounded the ratification of the proposed Constitution following the Constitutional Convention in 1787. The chief proponent, Alexander Hamilton, first wrote under the pseudonym “Caesar.” Later, Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay published the Federalist Papers under the collective pseudonym “Publius.” Their main adversary, Governor George Clinton of New York, wrote under the name “Cato.” These men were fortunate indeed that they did not have to contend with an act like the Alaska Campaign Disclosure Act. Had that been the case, they probably would have been prosecuted, since it is unlikely that any of them would have complied with its provisions. More importantly, however, our nation and the world might have been deprived of their ideas.