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Home – Supreme Court News – A 6-Pack, an Airplane, and Excessive Fines

A 6-Pack, an Airplane, and Excessive Fines

Imagine a judge imposing a million-dollar fine for jaywalking. Or suppose a shoplifter stole a tube of toothpaste from CVS and was ordered to pay $10,000. Those punishments would strike nearly everyone as outrageous—not because the offenses are imaginary, but because the penalties would be wildly disproportionate to them. The Eighth Amendment’s Excessive Fines Clause forbids precisely that kind of governmental overreach: “excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed.”

On Dec. 1, the Supreme Court will hear argument in Jouppi v. Alaska, a case arising from the misdemeanor transportation of alcohol into a “dry” Alaskan village. Kenneth Jouppi received the minimum sentence authorized by law: three days in jail, a $1,500 fine, and probation. Alaska insisted that was not enough. It also wanted his airplane—worth approximately $95,000 and essential to his livelihood. The Alaska Supreme Court agreed.

Eight Centuries of Proportionality

The prohibition on excessive fines is no constitutional afterthought. Its lineage reaches back at least to Magna Carta in 1215, passed through the English Bill of Rights of 1689, and appeared in colonial charters and early state constitutions before becoming part of our Bill of Rights in 1791.

Chapter 14 of Magna Carta declared that a freeman should be fined for a minor offense only “in accordance with the degree of the offence,” and for a grave offense only “in accordance with the gravity of the offence.” It further required that the penalty preserve the offender’s “contenement”—his means of living. Merchants were to retain their merchandise, and villeins their “waynage,” the farming equipment, animals, and carts necessary to work.

As Professor John F. Stinneford explains in “The Heritage Guide to the Constitution,” the historic rule required proportionality in two senses: The fine had to fit the gravity of the offense, and it could not destroy the offender’s ability to support himself. Both principles matter here. An airplane is not incidental property to an Alaskan air-taxi operator. It is his waynage.

A Clause Too Rarely Enforced

The Supreme Court has decided only a handful of cases under the Excessive Fines Clause.

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