This case involves Arthur H. Peterson's renewed petition for admission to the Alaska Bar Association after failing the January and September 1967 bar examinations. The court addressed challenges to the fairness of the hearing procedures under the Alaska Administrative Procedure Act and claims of unfairness in the scoring and passing thresholds. Applying the substantial evidence test, the court upheld the hearing officer's findings that no flexible or discriminatory scoring system was used and that Peterson had not shown his performance was comparable to passing exams from the earlier sitting. The court therefore denied admission while noting Peterson could retake the exam.

procedurecivil rights

The case involved A. J. Industries' challenge to a superior court ruling concerning the Alaska Public Service Commission's determination of the company's utility rate base and interim rates. After rehearing on the impact of a newly enacted statute, AS 42.05.441(b), the Alaska Supreme Court held that the statute did not apply to the rate base in question. The court modified its prior opinion to exclude any allowance for an expired federal income tax surcharge in the interim rates and set the rate base at $856,712 plus authorized adjustments for post-1966 increases and working capital. It remanded the matter for further proceedings consistent with the original opinion as modified and awarded additional attorneys' fees to A. J. Industries.

business & regulatory

The case concerned the constitutionality of Alaska statutes allowing unification of boroughs and cities into a single home-rule government, specifically whether AS 29.85.160(c) violated article X, section 9 of the state constitution by permitting the dissolution of the City of Douglas's home-rule charter even though a majority of Douglas voters opposed the unification charter. The City of Douglas sought a declaratory judgment after a 1970 election in which the Greater Juneau Borough ratified a unifying charter that dissolved Douglas, with votes from first-class cities counted together outweighing Douglas's negative majority. The court upheld the statute and dismissed the action, ruling that article X, section 7 authorizes the legislature to prescribe the manner of dissolving cities, a power distinct from the voter protections in section 9 for adopting, amending, or repealing home-rule charters. The core reasoning was that unification and dissolution involve broader questions of local government structure assigned to the legislature, while section 9 protects only the narrower local decision on whether to operate under home rule.

electionsprocedure