The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-07-03
MILLER INITIATES COURTS DECISION
 IS INCONSISTENT State Senator Will Not Admit That States Laws Can
 Be Dehed PROPOSITION IS UNDER STATES POLICE POWERS Says Opinion Is Founded on the Inva. sion Into and Assumption of
 Powers of the LegisIa- 4 tive Branch.

State Senator Nathan L. Miller dis cusses the decision of the supreme court on the locker club case from a critical standpoint He shows what he calls in- constituencies in the decision, and inti- mates that the court may have to re- verse itself
 The opinion in this case is founded upon the invasion into and assumption of the powers of the legislative branch of the government" he said yesterday. If 1t is sound law, then no act of the legis- lature in an attempted exercise of the po- lice powers of the state is valid un- less 1t is such as the judges of the court would have enacted had each of them been legislators seeking the accomplish ment of the same ultimate purposes held by the members enacting the act in ques- ton.
 Tt Is inconsistent with the we'll estab- lished doctrine that the prohibition of the manufacture of intoxicating liquors Is a legitimate exercise of the police powers. The right to manufacture is as much a property right as the right to store. Stor- ing Is as liable to produce drunkenness and crime in a community as manufac- turing
 Storing lends itself as readily as manu- featuring to trick, artifice and subterfuge under guise of which unlawful sales may ious this one must be taken back and those sustaining the prohibition of the manufacture must be withdrawn.
 But different courts are not always harmonious with each other, and the opinions of the one court are not al- ways harmonious with themselves, and in this case we have clear example of inharmonious declarations within the same opinion. The court, however, has the last say in all these propositions re- gardless of how erroneous or inconsistent its conclusions may be. And while this opinion Is the law of this particular case. 1t is not necessarily the law of the land.
 ''The court may take it back. The law of the land Is always the same from it's enactment until it is repealed or amended by the law-making power, and if the court should in another case rule contrary to this opinion prior to the legislative ac- lloLp lliSH tlliS ucClSlOn lb only law III I1lS case, and not the law of the land. and the court would doubtless be as vigorous as any one else in saying that 1t had not legislated in either of its opinions.
 However, 1t is reasonable to conclude from the fact that some of the justices dissented in this case and from the di- vision of the court in the 'hop-jack case, which involved somewhat similar ques- tions, that the individual members of the court have reached fixed conclusion on the subject It is by no means certain, however, that the purpose of the storage ordinance cannot be accomplished by other means.
 ''The prohibition law ought to be en- forced as long as 1t remains on the statute books, and am not one of those who are willing to admit that our society is in such an anarchistic state that the statutes of this state can be defled and evaded and that the state is not able to enforce its own laws.'