Amicus Briefs
Williams Alaska Petroleum v. State of Alaska
CASE SUMMARY
NCLA asked the court not to defer to a legal interpretation made by the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC). Instead, NCLA argued that Alaskan courts must interpret the law without deferring to the agency’s interpretation.
NCLA’s brief argued that deferring to a state agency’s statutory interpretation violates both the state and federal constitutions for two reasons. First, agency deference requires judges to abandon their duty of independent judgment, which is also part of the judicial oath. Second, agency deference violates the Due Process Clauses of the Alaska Constitution and the U.S. Constitution by commanding judicial bias toward a litigant. If a court defers to the legal interpretation of one of two opposing parties before the court—such as an agency of the State of Alaska—that denies a fair trial before a neutral tribunal to the other party before the court.
This amicus curiae brief took no position on any other issues raised on appeal. Although the parties were fighting in part over whether DEC’s statutory interpretation was correct, NCLA contended that the Alaska Supreme Court should not defer to DEC regardless of whether DEC’s reading of state law was right or whether it is wrong. Alaska’s highest court should have joined the nationwide trend of other states like Wisconsin, Mississippi, Arkansas, Arizona and Florida that had recently abandoned the practice of judicial deference to agency legal interpretations.