The aegis & intelligencer. [volume] (Bel Air, Md.) 1864-1923, 1890-05-09
An Important Liquor Decision.

The United States Supreme Court, on
April 2Sth, rendered an opinion adverse to
the constitutionality of State laws providing
for the seizure of liquors brought into the
State in original packages, holding such laws
to be an interference with interstate COM
merce. After the liquor becomes the pro-
perty of the importer the State may, under
its police powers, regulate or prohibit sale,
but it has no power, in the absence of express
congressional authority, to prohibit the trans
portation of the article from another State
and its delivery to the importer. The case
was brought on appeal from the Supreme
Court of Iowa, which reversed the decision
of the State court. The opinion was render
ed by Chief Justice Miller, in which he said !:
"That ardent spirits are subjects of inter-
State commerce can not be denied. When
ever law of State amounts essentially to
regulation of commerce, as it does when it
inhbits directly or indirectly the receipt of
an imported commodity, or its disposition
before it has ceased to become an article OF
trade between one State and another, it
comes in conflict with power which in this
particular has been exclusively in the general
government, and is therefore void.
"Whatever our individual views may be as
to the deleterious qualities of particular ar
ticles, we can not hold that any articles which
Congress recognizes as subjects of Interstate
commerce are not such, or that whatever are
thus recognized can be controlled by State
laws"
Justice Gray delivered dissenting opinion
in behalf of himself and Justices Harlan and
Brewer. 1t says:
Common experience has shown that the
general and unrestricted use of intoxicating
liquors tends TO produce idleness, disorder,
disease, pauperism and crime. The power
of regulating or prohibiting the manufacture
and sale of intoxicating liquors appropriately
belongs as branch of the police power
to the Legislatures of the several States,
and can be judiciously and effectively
exercised by them alone, according to their
views of public policy and local needs /; and
can not, practically, if it can censtitutionally,
be welded by Congress as part of national
and uniform system. The statutes in ques-
ton were enacted by the State of Iowa in
the exercise of its undoubted power to pro-
tect its inhabitants against the evils, physi-
cal, moral and social, attending the free use
of intoxicating liquors. They are not aimed
ct Interstate commerce they have no rela-
ton to the movement of goods from one
State to another, but operate only on intoxi-
eating liquors within the territorial limits of
the State they include all such liquors with
out discrimination, and do not even mention
where they are made or whence they came.
If the statutes of a State, restricting or pro-
hibiting the sale of intoxicating liquors with
in its territory, are to be held imperative and
void, as applied to liquors sent or brought
from another State and sold by the importer
in what are called original packages, the con-
sequence must be that an inhabitant of any
State may, under the pretext of interstate
commerce, and without license or supervi-
sion of any public authority, carry or send
into, and sell in any or all of the other States
of the Union, intoxicating liquors of what
ever description, in cases or kegs, or even in
single bottles or TASKS, despite any legisla
tion of those States on the subject, and al
though his own State should be the only one
which had not enacted similar laws.
1--WE would require affirmative and explicit
legislation on the part of Congress to con-
vince US that it contemplated or intended
such result"