A $95,000 airplane. A six-pack of Budweiser. Thirteen years of litigation. The Supreme Court agreed to hear Jouppi v. Alaska, and if you want to understand why the Excessive Fines Clause exists, you won’t find a cleaner teaching case.

Ken Jouppi has flown bush routes across Alaska for decades, the kind of work that keeps remote villages supplied when there’s no road in or out. On April 3, 2012, he was set to fly a passenger and her groceries from Fairbanks to Beaver, a village of fewer than 100 people that voted itself dry in 2004. State troopers searched the plane before takeoff and found beer in the passenger’s bags, two cases of Budweiser and one of Bud Light, a gift she was bringing to her husband. Jouppi says he didn’t know it was there. A jury convicted him anyway of a misdemeanor alcohol-importation offense. The statutory penalty was a $1,500 fine and three days in jail. He served it.