Court Opinion

ID: 9633945
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 12:08:27.389509+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:20:06.001256
License: Public Domain

RABINO WITZ, Justice,
dissenting in part.
I am in agreement with the majority’s resolution of the standing and local or special legislation issues, as well as the majority’s conclusion that it is unnecessary to pass upon the contention that the United States is an indispensable party to this litigation. My disagreement with the majority lies in the court’s disposition of the question of whether the proposed transfer of mineral rights is constitutionally permissible.
Before explaining why I find I cannot agree with the court’s holdings that in the particular circumstances of this case a constitutional amendment is not mandated and that “legislative approval of the Cook Inlet land exchange is sufficient once Congress consented to lifting the restrictions imposed against alienation of mineral rights,” I think it appropriate to clarify my position in relation to several rather peripheral aspects of this appeal.
First, although I reach the same legal conclusion that appellees would have the court reach in this appeal, I cannot subscribe to appellees’ assertions of wrongdoing on the part of members of the executive branch of Alaska’s government. In this regard I think portions of appellees’ brief embody rather intemperate and reckless accusations. More to the point, I have as*645sumed for purposes of my analysis of the constitutional question here that all parties involved in this historic proposed land exchange have acted in utmost good faith and that the executive branch of Alaska’s government has obtained exchange terms which are in fact entirely fair in relation to the interests of the people of the State of Alaska. Secondly, I am in full accord with the attempts on the part of both the federal and state governments to work out an equitable solution with Cook Inlet Region, Inc. in order to effectuate the provisions of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act. For it is my belief that it is essential that equitable settlement implementations be achieved of the respective land claims of Native Alaskans. Nevertheless, Alaska’s Constitution has vested the judicial power of the state in the Supreme Court of Alaska.1 A concomitant of this power is the necessity of interpreting Alaska’s Constitution, when called upon, in accordance with neutral principles of constitutional analysis. For regardless of whom the particular litigants may be, Alaska’s Constitution provides “that all persons are equal and entitled to equal rights, opportunities, and protection under the law.”2 Thus, with these preliminary matters in mind, I now turn to the question which the majority has termed “The Constitutionality of the Proposed Transfer of Mineral Rights.”
Article IV, section 3 of the Constitution of the United States provides in part that “New states may be admitted by the Congress into this Union . . . .”3 As the majority notes, the sequential procedural stages prior to the actual admission of the Territory of Alaska into the Union are unusual. Unlike the sequencing of events in most previous admissions, Alaska’s Constitution was adopted by the constitutional convention and ratified by the people of the Territory of Alaska prior to the enactment by the United States Congress of enabling legislation. In Metlakatla Indian Community, Annette Island Reserve v. Egan, this court viewed the pre-statehood efforts on the part of the Territory of Alaska in the following manner: “This constitution served as a basis for subsequent petitions to Congress for Statehood and can be considered as an offer to accept the privileges and responsibilities of that status in accordance with its terms.”4 Keeping in mind the power of Congress to admit new states into the Union and the unusual circumstance that the Territory of Alaska adopted a proposed state constitution before Congress had passed enabling legislation, I now address the extremely difficult question presented in determining the legal effect of the provisions of the Statehood Act and Alaska Constitution which are at issue in this appeal.
In Coyle v. Smith, 221 U.S. 559, 31 S.Ct. 688, 55 L.Ed. 853 (1911), the Supreme Court of the United States was faced with a question involving the ability of a state to act in contradiction to relevant provisions of its enabling act. The Oklahoma Enabling Act contained numerous restrictions, among them, that the state capital was to be temporarily located in Guthrie. The enabling act contained two types of restrictions, those required to be inserted in the state constitution and those which the Oklahoma constitutional convention was required to accept by “ordinance irrevocable.” The state capital provision was of the latter type. In upholding the Oklahoma legisla*646ture’s power to transfer the capital to Oklahoma City, the Supreme Court established three subdivisions with respect to restrictions insisted upon by Congress in enabling legislation. First, are conditions which are fulfilled by the admission of the state; second are “compacts or affirmative legislation intended to operate in futuro, which are within the scope of the conceded powers of Congress over the subject”;5 third, are the compacts which restrict the powers of a new state in matters that would otherwise be exclusively within the sphere of state power. The Supreme Court stated:
As to requirements in such enabling acts as relate only to the contents of the Constitution for the proposed new state, little need to be said. The constitutional provision concerning the admission of new states is not a mandate, but a power to be exercised with discretion. From this alone it would follow that Congress may require, under penalty of denying admission, that the organic law of a new state at the time of admission shall be such as to meet its approval. A Constitution thus supervised by Congress would, after all, be a Constitution of a state, and as such subject to alteration and amendment by the state after admission. Its force would be that of a state Constitution, and not that of an act of Congress.6
The Supreme Court then went on to hold that so far as Congress was attempting to deprive the state of any power which was constitutionally possessed by other states, the attempt was invalid. The Court stated:
The plain deduction from this case is that when a new state is admitted into the Union, it is so admitted with all of the powers of sovereignty and jurisdiction which pertain to the original states, and that such powers may not be constitutionally diminished, impaired, or shorn away by any conditions, compacts, or stipulations embraced in the act under which the new state came into the Union, which would not be valid and effectual if the subject of congressional legislation after admission.7
Thus, it is clear that Congress is empowered to insist on certain inclusions in the particular state’s constitution as a prerequisite to admission; what is forbidden to Congress is regulation which impairs “the essence of the power of statehood.”8 In Coyle v. Smith the Supreme Court concluded that the restriction on moving the capital of Oklahoma could be ignored by the new state since it related to a power which was traditionally within the state’s ambit of powers.
As I analyze the issue, the restrictions contained in section 6(i) of the Statehood Act on the State of Alaska’s power to alienate mineral interests in state lands comes within the Coyle category relating to constitutional conditions imposed as a prerequisite to admission. In the usual case in which an enabling act was passed prior to the meeting of the state’s constitutional convention, Congress was able to insist on the inclusion of various provisions in the state’s proposed constitution.9 Inasmuch as *647Alaska’s constitutional convention was held long before passage by Congress of enabling legislation, Congress was unable to exercise its power to insist that the proposed constitution contain specific provisions. However, it did insist that the people of the proposed State of Alaska adopt, among other explicit restrictions and conditions, the restrictions contained in section 6(i) of the Statehood Act, and that upon passage by the people, the proposed constitution of the State of Alaska would be deemed amended. More particularly, section 6(i) of the Alaska Statehood Act provides in part that:
All grants made or confirmed under this Act shall include mineral deposits. The grants of mineral lands to the State of Alaska under subsections (a) and (b) of this section are made upon the express conditions that all sales, grants, deeds, or patents for any of the mineral lands so granted shall be subject to and contain a reservation to the State of all of the minerals in the lands so sold, granted, deeded, or patented, together with the right to prospect for, mine, and remove the same.
Section 8(b) of the Statehood Act required that three propositions be submitted to the qualified voters in the Territory of Alaska. In the event each of the three propositions was adopted by a majority of the electorate, then
. the proposed constitution of the proposed State of Alaska, ratified by the people at the election held on April 24, 1956, shall be deemed amended accordingly.10
Of particular significance is proposition (3) which was set forth in section 8(b) of the Alaska Statehood Act. This proposition required, as a prerequisite to the territory’s admission into the Union, that a majority of the qualified electorate consent to
[a]ll provisions of the [statehood] Act reserving rights or powers to the United States, as well as those prescribing the terms or conditions of the grants of lands or other property therein made to the State of Alaska, are consented to fully by said State and its people.
In my view it is not possible to draw a viable distinction between the procedural mechanism employed by Congress in the case of Alaska’s admission and the power that Congress has exercised over usual admissions in the past. For I do not discern any difference between the power to declare a proposed constitution of a proposed state amended as a prerequisite to admission and the power to insist on particular constitutional provisions as a prerequisite to *648admission. In my view, it is a logical deduction from the usual admission sequence that had Congress first passed an enabling act and then the Territory of Alaska had held its constitutional convention, the proposed constitution would have contained the restriction against alienation of mineral resources. If the proposed constitution lacked such a provision, Congress would not have admitted Alaska into the Union.
Thus, I reach the conclusion that the restraint on alienation of mineral resources provided by section 6(i) of the Alaska Statehood Act became part of the Constitution of the State of Alaska by virtue of the previously mentioned language of section 8(b) of the Alaska Statehood Act and the electorate’s favorable vote upon proposition (3).11 In my view, reliance upon the provisions of article XIII, section 1 and article XIII, section 4 as providing the exclusive procedural mechanisms for amendment of Alaska’s Constitution is inapposite.12 For at the time the electorate of the Territory of Alaska voted favorably on proposition (3), statehood had not been attained. Thus, the provisions of article XIII, section 1 and article XIII, section 4, in the factual context of the case at bar, remained inoperative until Alaska was admitted into the Union. Nor do I view the conclusion reached here as contrary to the majority’s assertion that “. . . the United States Congress has no power to amend a state’s constitution.” For in the instant case it was within Congress’ powers over admission to insist that as a condition or prerequisite to achieving statehood the people of Alaska consent to the restriction on the power of the state to alienate its mineral resources, and that these restraints be deemed additions to the proposed constitution of Alaska. Such requirements on Congress’ part are constitutionally permissible, for as the Supreme Court said in Coyle v. Smith
[a] Constitution thus supervised by Congress would, after all, be a Constitution of a state, and as such subject to alteration and amendment by the state after admission.13
Given the conclusion that the prohibitions against alienation of mineral interests in state lands became part of Alaska’s Constitution by virtue of the provisions of section 8(b) of the Statehood Act and the people’s adoption of proposition (3), the question remains how such restrictions can be lifted. In State ex rel. Interstate Stream Commission v. Reynolds, 71 N.M. 389, 378 P.2d 622 (1963), the New Mexico Supreme Court was *649faced with a similar problem. In 1898 Congress enacted the Ferguson Act which granted to the territory of New Mexico 500,000 acres of land “for the establishment of permanent water reservoirs for irrigating purposes.” All money derived from the trust land was to be placed in a separate fund and its use restricted to the trust purpose. The Enabling Act of 1910, pursuant to which New Mexico became a state, provided in section 10:
That it is hereby declared that all lands hereby granted, including those which, having been heretofore granted to the said Territory, are hereby expressly transferred and confirmed to the said State, shall be by the said State held in trust, to be disposed of in whole or in part only in manner as herein provided and for the several objects specified in the respective granting and confirmatory provisions, and that the natural products and money proceeds of any of said lands shall be subject to the same trusts as the lands producing the same, (emphasis added)
Article XXI, section 9 of the New Mexico Constitution provided:
This state and its people consent to all and singular the provisions of the said Act of Congress, approved June twentieth, nineteen hundred and ten, concerning the lands by said act granted or confirmed to this state, the terms and conditions upon which said grants and confirmations were made and the means and manner of enforcing such terms and conditions, all in every respect and particular as in said act provided.
The plaintiff brought suit challenging the constitutionality of various state statutes appropriating reservoir trust funds. The New Mexico Supreme Court held that the statutes did not conflict with the Ferguson Act, and stated:
Section 10 of the Enabling Act became a part of our fundamental law to the same extent as if it had been directly incorporated into the Constitution when thus expressly consented to by the people in Article XXI, Section 9 of the Constitution.14
Here, not unlike the court’s analysis in Reynolds, I have concluded that section 6(i) of the Alaska Statehood Act became part of Alaska’s fundamental law. In light of this conclusion, I would hold that Chapter 19, SLA 1976, which purportedly authorized the land exchange in question, is violative of the Alaska Constitutional prohibition against alienation of mineral resources in state lands. The relevant prohibitions against alienation of mineral resources in state lands can only be removed by amendment to the Alaska Constitution. Since Chapter 19, SLA 1976, an ordinary legislative enactment, does not have the status of a constitutional amendment, it is wholly ineffective to lift the alienation restraints in question. Thus, I conclude that the superior court’s holding that Chapter 19, SLA 1976 was unconstitutional should be affirmed.
I think it appropriate to briefly express my views concerning the compact theory and the majority’s disposition of this argument. My point of departure from the majority’s analysis concerning appellees’ compact theory centers on whether the compact which was entered into between the future state and Congress could be altered by methods other than an amendment to Alaska’s Constitution. For the reasons expressed previously, I again am led to the conclusion that section 6(i) of the Alaska Statehood Act became part of Alaska’s fundamental law when it was incorporated into Alaska’s Constitution. Once this occurred, the compact between Congress and Alaska could only be altered on Alaska’s part by constitutional amendment. Thus the approval given by Alaska’s legislature15 to the Cook Inlet land exchange is constitu-. tionally insufficient, even in light of the fact that Congress expressly affirmed the *650removal of the restrictions imposed against alienation of mineral interests in the State of Alaska’s lands.16
I simply cannot accept the state’s argument that the words “deemed amended accordingly” as used in section 8(c) of the Alaska Statehood Act were
intended simply to acknowledge and confirm the basic rule of federal supremacy: if any provision of the Alaska Constitution conflicted directly and irreconcilably with a provision of the Statehood Act, the former must give way.17 (emphasis in original).
Here the interests at stake reach beyond federal supremacy or federal control and preservation of mineral interests; for the compact protected the people of Alaska from alienation of their mineral resources without their approval as given by constitutional amendment. Thus, for these additional reasons I would affirm the superior court’s holding that Alaska’s legislature was not empowered to waive the alienation restraints in question without the express consent of the people of Alaska.

. Article IV, section 1 of the Alaska Constitution reads in part: “The judicial power of the State is vested in a supreme court, a superior court, and the courts established by the legislature.”

. Article I, section 1, Alaska Constitution.

. Article IV, section 4 of the Constitution of the United States further provides that: “The United States shall guarantee to every State in this unión a Republican Form of Government

.Metlakatla Indian Community, Annette Island Reserve v. Egan, 362 P.2d 901, at 908-09 (Alaska 1961), rev'd in part on other grounds, sub nom. Metlakatla Indian Community v. Egan, 369 U.S. 45, 82 S.Ct. 552, 7 L.Ed.2d 562 (1962), aff’din part on other grounds, sub nom. Organized Village of Kake v. Egan, 369 U.S. 60, 82 S.Ct. 562, 7 L.Ed.2d 573 (1962).

. Coyle v. Smith, 221 U.S. 559, 568, 31 S.Ct. 688, 690, 55 L.Ed. 853, 858 (1911).

. Id.

. Id. at 573, 31 S.Ct. at 692, 55 L.Ed. at 860.

. Interior Airways, Inc. v. Wien Alaska Airlines, Inc., 188 F.Supp. 107, 112 (D.Alaska 1960).

. Professor Westel Willoughby discusses the subject of admissions of new states as follows:
The Constitution, without distinguishing between the original and new States, defines the political privileges which the States are to enjoy, and declares that all powers not granted to the United States shall be considered as reserved ‘to the States.’ From this it almost irresistibly follows that Congress has not the right to provide that certain members of the Union, possessing full statehood, shall have their constitutional competences less than those of their sister States. According to this, then, though Congress may exact of Territories whatever conditions it sees fit as requirements precedent to their admission as States, when admitted as such, it cannot deny to them any of the privileges and immunities which the other Commonwealths enjoy.
The principle of the equality of the States had its origin before the adoption of the Constitution itself. In the acts of cession by the *647several States through which the old Confederacy obtained the control of the Northwest Territory, it was provided that from this vast area new States should, from time to time, be organized, which should be admitted to the Confederacy, with the same sovereign rights enjoyed by other States.
The famous Northwest Ordinance of 1787, reenacted by the Congress of the United States in 1789, after laying down the general conditions upon which statehood was to be accorded, declared that the States, so admitted, should be ‘on an equal footing with the original States in all respects whatever.’
Notwithstanding, however, this requirement of equality, Congress at an early date began the practice of exacting from would-be States various promises by the terms of which they were to hold themselves bound after their admission to the Union and until Congress should release them. Thus, for example, beginning in 1802 with Ohio, the first State formed from the Northwest Territory, it was demanded by Congress that that State, when admitted, should pass an ordinance, irrevocable without the consent of Congress, not to tax for five years all public lands sold by the United States; and a requirement substantially similar was demanded of many of the States later formed. When Missouri was admitted in 1821 it was required to declare that its Constitution should never be so construed as to permit its legislature to pass a law excluding citizens of other States from the enjoyment of any of the privileges and immunities granted them by the Federal Constitution. (footnote omitted)
1 W. Willoughby, The Constitutional Law of the United States 310-11 (2d ed. 1929).

. Section 8(b) of the Statehood Act further stipulated that:
In the event any one of the [three] foregoing propositions is not adopted at said election by a majority of the legal votes cast on said submission, the provisions of this Act shall thereupon cease to be effective.

.I find further support for this conclusion in the provisions of article VIII, section 9 which provide in part, with respect to Alaska’s natural resources that:
Subject to the provisions of this section, the legislature may provide for the sale or grant of state lands, or interests therein, and establish sales procedures. All sales or grants shall contain such reservations to the State of all resources as may be required by Congress or the State and shall provide for access to these resources, (emphasis added)
Also of significance is the text of article XII, section 13 which states that:
All provisions of the act admitting Alaska to the Union which reserve rights or powers to the United States, as well as those prescribing the terms or conditions of the grants of lands or other property, are consented to fully by the State and its people.
Admittedly section 6(i) of the Statehood Act can be viewed as a response to article VIII, section 9 of Alaska’s proposed constitution. Yet Congress, in its enabling legislation, sought approval by the electorate of proposition (3) both as a condition of admission to statehood and as an amendment to the proposed constitution.

. Article XIII, section 1 provides for amendment of Alaska’s Constitution by a two-third vote of each house of the legislature thereafter approved by a majority vote at the next statewide election. Article XIII, section 4 makes provision for constitutional amendment by means of a constitutional convention subject to ratification by the electorate.

. 221 U.S. 559, 568, 31 S.Ct. 688, 690, 55 L.Ed. 853, 858 (1911).
A brief note should also be made with respect to the majority’s position that the people of the proposed State of Alaska adopted the proposed constitution as defined by A Report to the People of Alaska from the Alaska Constitutional Convention. It is obvious that when the people voted on the proposed constitution, they did not have the report before them; they voted only on the proposed constitution, thus leaving the interpretation of the provisions of that document to the proposed judicial branch of government.

. The New Mexico Supreme Court had previously held in Lake Arthur Drainage Dist. v. Field, 27 N.M. 183, 199 P. 112 (1921), that section 10 of the Enabling Act was a part of the fundamental law of the state.

. Chapter 19, SLA 1976.

. I believe that the majority’s reliance on Boeing Aircraft Co. v. Reconstruction Finance Corp., 25 Wash.2d 652, 171 P.2d 838 (1946) is inappropriate. The holding that “the people would speak through the mouth of the legislature in agreeing that Federal property might be taxed,” 171 P.2d at 843, was merely an alternative holding which the court characterized as less compelling than its holding that the exemption from taxation was merely declaratory of the law without regard to the provisions of the compact and hence did not bind the state to exempt the federal property when the federal government allowed taxation. It has been noted that events contemporaneous with the Boeing decision made the constitutional issue in the case seem less important. See Tonasket v. State, 84 Wash.2d 164, 525 P.2d 744, 759 (1974) (Utter J., dissenting).
However, even if Boeing is accepted as having a valid basis, there are reasons to not extend its rationale to this case. Boeing involved a restriction which ran solely to the benefit of the federal government; the people of Washington were benefited by the lifting of the exemption. In the case at bar, the restriction runs in favor of the people of Alaska and represents a limitation on the actions of the state government. In such a circumstance, it would indeed be anomalous to allow the state government to consent to a modification of the compact on behalf of the people.

. Similarly, I disagree with the state’s analysis that the
dominant intention in adding this limiting provision subsection 6(i), was merely to retain discretionary federal control over the State’s management of mineral in lands known at Statehood time to be chiefly valuable for commercial mineral production.