Digital Bob Archive

Territorial legislators were, at least in theory, under special constraints because the Organic Act that created the Territory of Alaska gave Congress the right to review all laws passed by the Alaska Legislature and to nullify any it didn't like. That power was never used, so far as I can discover; not even when the Legislature passed a bill that flatly and blatantly ignored the Constitution of the United States. In fact, they passed it in each house, then passed it again in each house over the veto of the governor. There is some doubt that Congress even reviewed the flock of new laws that were sent to it every other year from Juneau, and it was a common complaint of the duly elected Alaska legislators that Congress never read the many memorials that were addressed to it.

It was in 1921 that the Alaska Territorial Legislature passed what was probably its most radical law. There had been, for some time, controversy over whether women, who had been given the vote in Alaska in 1913, should be required to serve on juries. It was decided, in 1921, to let the women vote on the matter at the next General Election, in 1922. The women would vote on the question, not the men.

That would have been legal before August 26, 1920, which was when the Nineteenth Amendment was certified. This was known as the women suffrage amendment, but actually it applied to men as well as women. The amendment says: ?The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.\"

Some of the legislators argued that the amendment did not apply to Alaska because Alaska was not a state. They may have been right; nobody ever tested it. The bill sailed through the House on a 14-1 vote, with 1 absent. The only man to vote against the bill on the first round was the late Earle L. Hunter, Sr., of Juneau. The Senate passed it unanimously. Governor Thomas Riggs, Jr., promptly vetoed the bill and sent it back, whereupon the House passed it again, 11-5, and the Senate did the same, 7-1. It became the law of Alaska.

Probably those were less litigious days. At any rate, no man took it to court, nor did any woman. And Congress ignored the whole thing. When Election Day rolled around in November, 1922, the women of Alaska voted in favor of compulsory jury service for members of their sex, by a substantial majority. Only out in the Second Division, in the far Northwest, was the vote even close. In that district it was 79 for, 63 against compulsory service.