Court Opinion

ID: 9546376
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 17:28:34.256439+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:16:22.159333
License: Public Domain

RABINOWITZ, Justice,
dissenting in part.
Article VI of the Constitution of the United States provides in Clause 2:
This Constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the Constitution or laws of any state to the contrary notwithstanding.
With regard to the Supremacy Clause of the Federal Constitution, we said in Totemoff v. State, 905 P.2d 954, 963 (Alaska 1995):
We are not obliged to follow Katie John, since this court is not bound by decisions of federal courts other than the United States Supreme Court on questions of federal law. In re F.P., 843 P.2d 1214, 1215 n. 1 (Alaska 1992), cert. denied, 508 U.S. 950, 113 S.Ct. 2441, 124 L.Ed.2d 659 (1993).[1]
The basic principle operative here is that all
American courts, state and federal, owe obedience to the decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States on questions of federal law, and a judgment of the Supreme Court provides the rule to be followed in all such courts until the Supreme Court sees fit to reexamine it.[2]
IB James W. Moore, Moore’s Federal Practice § 0.402[1], at 1-10 (2d ed.1996).
Given the mandate of the Supremacy Clause and this court’s acknowledgment that it is obligated to follow the decisions of the United States Supreme Court on questions of federal law, I dissent from the majority’s departure from the holding of Kulko v. Superior Court, 436 U.S. 84, 98 S.Ct. 1690, 56 L.Ed.2d 132 (1978).
In Kulko, the United States Supreme Court held that California lacked personal jurisdiction over Ezra Kulko, who had sent one of his daughters to live with her mother in California. The Court ruled:
The unilateral activity of those who claim some relationship with a nonresident defendant cannot satisfy the requirement of contact with the forum state.... [I]t is essential in each ease that there be some act by which the defendant purposefully avails [himjself of the privilege of conducting activities within the forum state....
*416436 U.S. at 93-94, 98 S.Ct. at 1698 (quoting Hanson v. Denckla, 357 U.S. 235, 253, 78 S.Ct. 1228, 1239-40, 2 L.Ed.2d 1283 (1958)) (alterations in original). In my view, this is the core holding of Kulko. In the instant case, David Green has done even less in the way of “purposefully availing himself of the privilege of conducting activities within the forum state” than Ezra Kulko did. Ezra Kulko actually placed one of his children on a plane to California. Here David Green did nothing directed toward Alaska.
I readily concede that there are numerous grey areas implicated in the methodology of personal jurisdiction analysis once the “essential” element of “the defendant purposefully availing himself’ of the privilege of conducting activities within the forum state is satisfied. Nevertheless, the purposeful availment element is the sine qua non of personal jurisdiction. Since Kulko is squarely on point, I am not persuaded that we are free to disregard its teachings. Thus I would affirm the superior court’s denial of Kerri’s motion for modification of child support on the basis that under Kulko the superior court lacked personal jurisdiction over David Green.3

. In re F.P., 843 P.2d 1214, 1215 n. 1 (Alaska 1992), declares:
As the court of appeals observed in Harrison v. State, 791 P.2d 359 (Alaska App.1990):
Where a federal question is involved, the courts of Alaska are not bound by the decisions of a federal court other than the United States Supreme Court.
Id. at 363 n. 7 (citations omitted).
See also Freeman v. Lane, 962 F.2d 1252, 1258 (7th Cir.1992); Kraus v. Board of Ed. of Jennings, 492 S.W.2d 783, 784-85 (Mo.1973).

. Cf. Booster Lodge No. 405, Int. Ass’n of M. & A.W. v. N.L.R.B., 459 F.2d 1143, 1150 (D.C.Cir.1972), aff'd, 412 U.S. 84, 93 S.Ct. 1961, 36 L.Ed.2d 764 (1973) (holding the court of appeals may not properly overrule a decision of the Supreme Court in order to force its reconsideration).

. X agree with the majority’s disposition of the transportation cost modification issue.