Vladimir Nabokov writes in Speak, Memory (1951), “Our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness.”
Many interpret this as an expression of nihilism — but is it truly?
Rather than despair, Nabokov’s “brief crack of light” is a profound affirmation: a celebration of life itself.
The challenge, of course, is that it is brief.
Our life begins in only one way. There must be an egg, and there must be a sperm. When they meet, they transact — and the result is not darkness, but light.
At conception, a real physical flash occurs: a burst of electromagnetic energy, ordered and luminous. It is not metaphor, but observable fact.
Each of us begins with that spark — that ordered energy — and from it comes humanity itself.
The enduring lesson is clear: always seek the light.
The Alaska Legislature is our state’s lawmaker. Its sole duty is to bring light to the people they represent — to avoid darkness where possible, and when darkness is encountered, to shine light upon it and dispel it.
Article I, Section 1 of Alaska’s Constitution states:
“This constitution is dedicated to the principles that all persons have a natural right to life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, and the enjoyment of the rewards of their own industry; that all persons are equal and entitled to equal rights, opportunities, and protection under the law; and that all persons have corresponding obligations to the people and to the State.”
The Legislature must not create new rights. It must restore and reassert those already declared — rights long denied by a Court that forgot its duty.
This section opens with a powerful affirmation: that all persons are endowed with natural rights — life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, and the rewards of their own work. It echoes the moral foundation of American democracy, reaching back to the Declaration of Independence. Yet Alaska’s framers added something even stronger: not only are rights declared, but obligations are imposed — obligations to the people and to the State. Freedom is not a free license; it is a duty-laden light. Rights demand responsibility. Liberty demands contribution. The pursuit of happiness is not guaranteed — only the right to strive for it in a just society.
The Alaska Supreme Court’s ruling in Cogan v. State (1983) marked a serious constitutional breach. By treating Article I, Section 1 of the Alaska Constitution — the guarantee of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness — as merely aspirational and unenforceable, the Court stripped the people’s most fundamental rights of any legal protection. Rather than defending individual liberty against government overreach, the Court excused state power at the people’s expense. That is not judicial interpretation; it is judicial abdication.
The Alaska Supreme Court derives its authority from the Constitution, but that authority is limited. It exists not to diminish the people’s rights, but to defend them. Natural rights are not decorative. They are binding — and they are the very reason constitutions exist. Neither the U.S. Constitution nor the Declaration of Independence treats rights as optional. Government exists solely to secure them. When the Alaska Constitution affirms life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, it issues commands, not suggestions. The Court has the right to interpret the law — not to hollow it out.
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In Cogan, the Court reversed the constitutional order. Instead of testing the legitimacy of government action, it used the Constitution to defend it — blurring the line between the rights of the people and the power of the State. This cannot be reconciled with the founding principles expressed in the Declaration of Independence and the Federalist Papers, where government is a servant of liberty, not its master. By failing to enforce Article I, Section 1 as a living limit on state power, the Court weakened both the moral and legal force of Alaska’s Constitution and opened the door to the steady erosion of individual rights under the pretense of civic obligation.
For over 40 years, Alaskans have watched their constitutional rights quietly undermined by judicial misinterpretation. Just as Nabokov described life as “a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness,” our rights are that fragile light — and they must be protected, not obscured. It now falls to the Alaska Legislature — the voice of the people — to act.
The Legislature must not create new rights. It must restore and reassert those already declared — rights long denied by a Court that forgot its duty. It must rebalance our system of government and make clear that in Alaska, as in America, government exists to serve the people, not to silence them. The Constitution demands it. The people deserve it.
The views expressed here are those of the author.
