Court Opinion

ID: 9795843
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 03:39:59.80191+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:37:18.138970
License: Public Domain

CARPENETI, J.,
concurring.
I agree that Alaska has jurisdiction to prosecute Jack, and that the decision of the court of appeals is therefore properly reversed. And I agree that Alaska’s jurisdiction is found under AS 44.03.030(1) and the effects doctrine. But I would not base jurisdiction here, as today’s opinion does, on the additional rationale that the crime occurred on the high seas and that Alaska therefore has jurisdiction under AS 44.03.010(2).
The term “high seas” has been variously interpreted by the courts, as today’s opinion notes, but the modern cases have strongly tended towards interpreting the term to exclude the territorial waters of nations. “By ... 1920, the Supreme Court generally interpreted ‘high seas’ to mean international or non-sovereign waters.”1 In 1907, in The Hamilton,2 Justice Holmes characterized the *323“high seas” as “outside the territory, in a place belonging to no other sovereign.”3 In 1909, in American Banana Co. v. United Fruit Co.,4 he referred to the “high seas” as a region “subject to no sovereign.”5 By 1920, when Congress adopted the Death on the High Seas Act (DOHSA),6 it was clear that Congress understood the Supreme Court to have “interpreted ‘high seas’ to mean ‘non-territorial waters:’ ”7
Under the Supreme Court’s analysis in McDermott [Int’l, Inc. v. Wilander ][8] the consistent reliance on these decisions in setting the terms of the debate over DOH-SA strongly suggests that Congress understood “high seas” to mean what these cases said it did, that is, international waters.[9]
In the years following the adoption of DOHSA in 1920, “[t]he Supreme Court continued to define ‘high seas’ as ‘international waters.’ ”10 In 1923, in Cunard Steamship Co. v. Mellon,11 the question concerned the reach of the National Prohibition Act, which was enacted pursuant to the Eighteenth Amendment. The latter governed conduct within “the United States and all territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof.”12 The Court noted that the Act had no effect outside the territorial waters of the United States.13 “The Court rejected the argument that, the Prohibition Amendment covered ships ‘outside the waters of the United States, whether on the high seas or in foreign waters,’ because ‘on the high seas ... there is no territorial sovereign.’ ”14
The ferry Matanuska was in Canadian territorial waters, in the Inside Passage, when the events in question allegedly occurred. Because the territorial waters of Canada do not appear to be the “high seas,” I would not base the state’s jurisdiction on AS 44.03.010(2).

. In re Air Crash Off Long Island, New York, on July 17, 1996, 209 F.3d 200, 205-06 (2nd Cir. 2000) (citations omitted).

. 207 U.S. 398, 28 S.Ct. 133, 52 L.Ed. 264 (1907).

. Id. at 403, 28 S.Ct. 133.

. 213 U.S. 347, 29 S.Ct. 511, 53 L.Ed. 826 (1909).

. Id. at 355, 29 S.Ct. 511.

. 46 U.S.C.A. app. §§ 761-67 (2005).

. In re Air Crash, 209 F,3d at 206.

. 498 U.S. 337, 341-42, 111 S.Ct. 807, 112 L.Ed.2d 866 (1991).

. In re Air Crash, 209 F.3d at 206.

. Id.

. 262 U.S. 100, 43 S.Ct. 504, 67 L.Ed. 894 (1923).

. U.S. Const amend. XVIII, § 1.

. Cunard, 262 U.S. at 123, 43 S.Ct. 504.

. In re Air Crash, 209 F.3d at 206 (quoting Cunard, 262 U.S. at 123, 43 S.Ct. 504).