Source: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/242/311/
Timestamp: 2019-04-23 02:09:28+00:00

Document:
Justia › US Law › US Case Law › US Supreme Court › Volume 242 › Clark Distilling Co. v. Western Maryland Ry. Co.
The West Virginia prohibition law of February, 1913, Code 1913, c. 32A, as amended by Acts of 1915, p. 33, id., p. 660, includes in its prohibitions the bringing into the state by carriers of intoxicating liquors intended for personal use and the receipt and possession of such liquors, when so introduced, for personal use.
Since the right asserted by the plaintiff is a permanent right to ship such liquors into the state, the decision concerns the state law as now amended, though the amendment occurred after the decision of the court below and after the first argument in this Court.
Without considering whether governmental power respecting intoxicating liquors extends to the prohibition of personal use, the right to restrict the means of procuring them for that purpose exists as an incident to the indubitable power to forbid manufacture and sale. Therefore these prohibitions of the West Virginia law are not offensive to the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
on interstate commerce and an interference with the power of Congress to regulate it. Leisy v. Hardin, 135 U. S. 100.
The Act of Congress of March 1, 1913, 37 Stat. 699, known as the Webb-Kenyon Act, operated, if constitutional, to give effect to the above stated prohibitions of the West Virginia law in respect of liquors shipped into the state for personal use by withdrawing from such shipments the immunity of interstate commerce, and, to forbid the shipment or transportation into the state of liquors intended to be received or possessed there for personal use contrary to such state prohibitions. Adams Express Co. v. Kentucky, 238 U. S. 190, distinguished.
The Webb-Kenyon Act is a legitimate exertion of the power to regulate commerce.
That power, in the case of intoxicants, because of their character extends to the total prohibition of their transport in interstate commerce, and necessarily includes the lesser power, exercised in the Webb-Kenyon Act, of adapting the regulation to the various local requirements and conditions that may be expressed in the laws of the states.
Such a mode of exercise involves no delegation of the power to the states.
(2) Because the power of Congress to regulate interstate commerce is not subject to the restriction that regulations shall be uniform throughout the United States.
The right of Congress to regulate a subject of interstate commerce, its scope, and the mode in which it may be exerted depend upon the degree of the power of Congress over the subject regulated -- viz., in this case, intoxicating liquor, and not upon those considerations which cause some subjects of interstate commerce to be under state control in the absence of congressional regulation and others to be free from state control until Congress has acted. Leisy v. Hardin, supra, explained and applied.
The Webb-Kenyon Act is not repugnant to the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment.
219 F. 333, id. 339, affirmed.
These were suits for injunctions compelling the defendants to accept intoxicating liquors for shipment into West Virginia. The appeals were taken from decrees of the district court dismissing the bills. The facts are stated in the opinion.
law to go into effect on July first of the following year. Code 1913, c. 32A. Putting out of view the right of druggists, under stringent regulations provided by the statute, to sell for medicinal purposes, and the right otherwise to sell wine for sacramental and alcohol for scientific and manufacturing purposes, the law forbade "the manufacture, sale, keeping or storing for sale in this state, or offering or exposing for sale," intoxicating liquors, and the intoxicants embraced were comprehensively defined. The statute contained many restrictions concerning hotels, restaurants, clubs, and so-called associations where liquor was kept and served either as a result of membership or by gift or otherwise, which were evidently intended to prevent the frustration of the prohibitions against the keeping of intoxicants for sale and purchase by subterfuge in the guise of the exercise of an individual right. There was no express prohibition against the individual right to use intoxicants, and none implied unless that result arose (a) from the prohibition in universal terms of all sales and purchases of liquor within the state, (b) from the clause providing that every delivery made in the state by a common or other carrier of the prohibited intoxicants should be considered as a consummation of a sale made in the state at the point of delivery, and (c) from the prohibitions which the statute contained against solicitations made to induce purchases of liquor, and against the publication in the state of all circulars, advertisements, price lists, etc., which might tend to stimulate purchases of liquor.
to pass the prohibition law if it meant otherwise, and of the right of Congress to adopt the Webb-Kenyon Act under a like hypothesis, were reserved. 219 F. 333. Before the decrees entered became final, the Circuit Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, in a case pending before it (West Virginia v. Adams exp. Company, 219 F. 794), decided directly to the contrary. It held that the law of West Virginia did prohibit shipments for personal use; that it did forbid solicitations therefore for such purchases; that, by operation of the Webb-Kenyon Act, there was no longer a right to ship liquor into the state in violation of its laws, and that both the state law and the Webb-Kenyon Act were constitutional. Controlled by such decision, the trial court recalled its opinion, heard a reargument, and, although not changing its view, accepted and gave effect to the conclusions reached by the circuit court of appeals because they were deemed to be authoritative, and the cases were brought directly here, because of the constitutional questions, to review such action.
2. The power of the state to enact the prohibition law consistently with the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and the exclusive power of Congress to regulate commerce among the several states.
That government can, consistently with the due process clause, forbid the manufacture and sale of liquor and regulate its traffic is not open to controversy, and that there goes along with this power full police authority to make it effective is also not open. Whether the general authority includes the right to forbid individual use we need not consider, since clearly there would be power, as an incident to the right to forbid manufacture and sale, to restrict the means by which intoxicants for personal use could be obtained, even if such use was permitted. This being true, there can be no doubt that the West Virginia prohibition law did not offend against the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Law has so regulated interstate commerce as to give the state the power to do what it did in enacting the prohibition law and cause its provisions to be applicable to shipments of intoxicants in interstate commerce, thus saving that law from repugnancy to the Constitution of the United States, which is the third proposition for consideration.
"An Act Divesting Intoxicating Liquors of Their Interstate Character in Certain cases."
". . . That the shipment or transportation, in any manner or by any means whatsoever, of any spirituous, vinous, malted, fermented, or other intoxicating liquor of any kind from one state, territory, or district of the United States . . . into any other state, territory, or district of the United States, . . . which said spirituous, vinous, malted, fermented, or other intoxicating liquor is intended, by any person interested therein, to be received, possessed, sold, or in any manner used, either in the original package or otherwise, in violation of any law of such state, territory, or district of the United States . . . is hereby prohibited."
to be no room for doubt that the prohibitions of the state law were made applicable by the Webb-Kenyon Law. If that law was valid, therefore, the state law was not repugnant to the commerce clause. It is insisted that this view gives too wide an effect to the Webb-Kenyon Law, since that act was only intended to include state prohibitions insofar as they forbade the shipment, receipt, and possession of liquor for a forbidden use, and hence, as individual use was not forbidden by the state law, the shipment, receipt, and possession for such use was not embraced by the Webb-Kenyon Act, and the state law, so far as it was outside of that Act, was repugnant to the commerce clause. This is sought to be supported by the historical environment of the Webb-Kenyon Act as evidenced by the debates on its passage and by a decision of the court, as well as decisions of state courts (which are in the margin [Footnote 2]), which, it is insisted, have so construed that act.
violation by permitting shipment, receipt, and possession for personal use, it would follow that a necessary and immediate incentive was imposed upon the states by the Webb-Kenyon Act to enact a provision against personal use.
there is no room for doubt that it was enacted simply to extend that which was done by the Wilson Act -- that is to say, its purpose was to prevent the immunity characteristic of interstate commerce from being used to permit the receipt of liquor through such commerce in states contrary to their laws, and thus in effect afford a means by subterfuge and indirection to set such laws at naught. In this light, it is clear that the Webb-Kenyon Act, if effect is to be given to its text, but operated so as to cause the prohibitions of the West Virginia law against shipment, receipt, and possession to be applicable and controlling irrespective of whether the state law did or did not prohibit the individual use of liquor. That such also was the embodied spirit of the Webb-Kenyon Act plainly appears, since, if that be not true, the coming into being of the act is wholly inexplicable.
the shipment of intoxicants "only when liquor is intended to be used in violation of the law of the state," and as the liquor shipped was intended for personal use, which was not forbidden, therefore the shipment, although prohibited by the state law, was beyond the reach of the Webb-Kenyon Act. But we see no ground for following the ruling thus made, since, as we have already pointed out, it necessarily rested upon an entire misconception of the text of the Webb-Kenyon Act, because that act did not simply forbid the introduction of liquor into a state for a prohibited use, but took the protection of interstate commerce away from all receipt and possession of liquor prohibited by state law.
We are not unmindful that opinions adverse to the power of Congress to enact the law were formed and expressed in other departments of the government. Opinion of the Attorney General, 30 Ops.Atty.Gen. 88; Veto Message of the President, 49 Cong.Rec. 4291. We are additionally conscious therefore of the responsibility of determining these issues and of their serious character.
to regulate which the Constitution conferred. Lottery Case, 188 U. S. 321; Hoke v. United States, 227 U. S. 308. The issue therefore is not one of an absence of authority to accomplish in substance a more extended result than that brought about by the Webb-Kenyon Law, but of a want of power to reach the result accomplished because of the method resorted to for that purpose. This is certain, since the sole claim is that the act was not within the power given to Congress to regulate because it submitted liquors to the control of the states by subjecting interstate commerce in such liquors to present and future state prohibitions, and hence, in the nature of things, was wanting in uniformity. Let us test the contentions by reason and authority.
that the act uniformly applies to the conditions which call its provisions into play -- that its provisions apply to all the states -- so that the question really is a complaint as to the want of uniform existence of things to which the act applies, and not to an absence of uniformity in the act itself. But, aside from this, it is obvious that the argument seeks to engraft upon the Constitution a restriction not found in it -- that is, that the power to regulate conferred upon Congress obtains subject to the requirement that regulations enacted shall be uniform throughout the United States. In view of the conceded power on the part of Congress to prohibit the movement of intoxicants in interstate commerce, we cannot admit that, because it did not exert its authority to the full limit, but simply regulated to the extent of permitting the prohibitions in one state to prevent the use of interstate commerce to ship liquor from another state, Congress exceeded its authority to regulate. We can see, therefore, no force in the argument relied upon tested from the point of view of reason, and we come to the question of authority.
"Yet a subject matter which has been confided exclusively to Congress by the Constitution is not within the jurisdiction of the police power of the state, unless placed there by congressional action."
sale, and exchange of commodities, is national in its character, and must be governed by a uniform system, so long as Congress does not pass any law to regulate it, or allowing the states so to do, it thereby indicates its will that such commerce shall be free and untrammeled."
"The conclusion follows that, as the grant of the power to regulate commerce among the states, so far as one system is required, is exclusive, the states cannot exercise that power without the assent of Congress."
"But, notwithstanding it is not vested with supervisory power over matters of local administration, the responsibility is upon Congress, so far as the regulation of interstate commerce is concerned, to remove the restriction upon the state in dealing with imported articles of trade within its limits, which have not been mingled with the common mass of property therein, if, in its judgment, the end to be secured justifies and requires such action."
And finally, after pointing out that the states had no power to interfere with the movement of goods in interstate commerce before they had been commingled with the property of the state, it was said that this limitation obtained "in the absence of congressional permission" to the state (p. 135 U. S. 124).
ruling in Leisy v. Hardin by Congress in legislating when it adopted the Wilson Act, and also to practically overrule the line of decisions which we have already referred to sustaining and enforcing that act. Let us see if this is not certain. As we have already pointed out, the very regulation made by Congress in enacting the Wilson Law to minimize the evil resulting from violating prohibitions of state law by sending liquor through interstate commerce into a state, and selling it in violation of such law, was to divest such shipments of their interstate commerce character and to strip them of the right to be sold in the original package free from state authority which otherwise would have obtained. And that Congress had the right to enact this legislation making existing and future state prohibitions applicable was the express result of the decided cases to which we have referred, beginning with In re Rahrer, 140 U. S. 545. As the power to regulate which was manifested in the Wilson Act, and that which was exerted in enacting the Webb-Kenyon Law, are essentially identical, the one being but a larger degree of exertion of the identical power which was brought into play in the other, we are unable to understand upon what principle we could hold that the one was not a regulation without holding that the other had the same infirmity -- a result which, as we have previously said, would reverse Leisy v. Hardin and overthrow the many adjudications of this Court sustaining the Wilson Act.
regulate and the mode in which the exertion of that power may be manifested. The two things are widely different, since the right to regulate and its scope and the mode of exertion must depend upon the power possessed by Congress over the subject regulated. Following the unerring path pointed out by that great principle, we can see no reason for saying that, although Congress, in view of the nature and character of intoxicants, had a power to forbid their movement in interstate commerce, it had not the authority to so deal with the subject as to establish a regulation (which is what was done by the Webb-Kenyon Law) making it impossible for one state to violate the prohibitions of the laws of another through the channels of interstate commerce. Indeed, we can see no escape from the conclusion that, if we accepted the proposition urged, we would be obliged to announce the contradiction in terms that, because Congress had exerted a regulation lesser in power than it was authorized to exert, therefore its action was void for excess of power. Or, in other words, stating the necessary result of the argument from a concrete consideration of the particular subject here involved, that, because Congress, in adopting a regulation, had considered the nature and character of our dual system of government, state and nation, and, instead of absolutely prohibiting, had so conformed its regulation as to produce cooperation between the local and national forces of government to the end of preserving the rights of all, it had thereby transcended the complete and perfect power of regulation conferred by the Constitution. And it is well again to point out that this abnormal result to which the argument leads concerns a subject as to which both state and nation, in their respective spheres of authority, possessed the supremest authority before the action of Congress which is complained of, and hence the argument virtually comes to the assertion that, in some undisclosed way, by the exertion of congressional authority, power possessed has evaporated.
It is only necessary to point out that the considerations which we have stated dispose of all contentions that the Webb-Kenyon Act is repugnant to the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment, since what we have said concerning that clause in the Fourteenth Amendment as applied to state power is decisive.
Before concluding, we come to consider what we deem to be arguments of inconvenience which are relied upon -- that is, the dread expressed that the power by regulation to allow state prohibitions to attach to the movement of intoxicants lays the basis for subjecting interstate commerce in all articles to state control, and therefore destroys the Constitution. The want of force in the suggested inconvenience becomes patent by considering the principle which, after all, dominates and controls the question here presented -- that is, the subject regulated and the extreme power to which that subject may be subjected. The fact that regulations of liquor have been upheld in numberless instances which would have been repugnant to the great guaranties of the Constitution but for the enlarged right possessed by government to regulate liquor has never, that we are aware of, been taken as affording the basis for the thought that government might exert an enlarged power as to subjects to which, under the constitutional guaranties, such enlarged power could not be applied. In other words, the exceptional nature of the subject here regulated is the basis upon which the exceptional power exerted must rest, and affords no ground for any fear that such power may be constitutionally extended to things which it may not, consistently with the guaranties of the Constitution, embrace.
"SEC. 7. It shall be unlawful for any person to keep or have, for personal use or otherwise, or to use, or permit another to have, keep or use, intoxicating liquors at any restaurant, store, office building, club, place where soft drinks are sold (except a drug store may have and sell alcohol and wine as provided by sections four and twenty-four), fruit stand, news stand, room, or place where bowling alleys, billiard or pool tables are maintained, livery stable, boathouse, public building, park, road, street or alley. It shall also be unlawful for any person to give or furnish to another intoxicating liquors, except as otherwise hereinafter provided in this section. Anyone violating this section shall be guilty of misdemeanor, and, upon conviction thereof, shall be fined not less than one hundred dollars nor more than five hundred dollars and be imprisoned in the county jail not less than two nor more than six months; provided, however, that nothing contained in this section shall prevent one in his home from having and there giving to another intoxicating liquors when such having or giving is in no way a shift, scheme or device to evade the provisions of this act; but the word 'home' as used herein, shall not be construed to be one's club, place of common resort, or room of a transient guest in a hotel or boarding house. And, provided further that no common carrier, for hire, nor other person, for hire or without hire, shall bring or carry into this state, or carry from one place to another within the state, intoxicating liquors for another, even when intended for personal use, except a common carrier may, for hire, carry pure grain alcohol and wine, and such preparations as may be sold by druggists for the special purposes and in the manner as set forth in sections four and twenty-four, and, provided, further, however, that in case of search and seizure, the finding of any liquors shall be prima facie evidence that the same are being kept and stored for unlawful purposes."
"SEC. 34. It shall be unlawful for any person in this state to receive, directly or indirectly, intoxicating liquors from a common, or other carrier. It shall also be unlawful for any person in this state to possess intoxicating liquors, received directly or indirectly from a common or other carrier in this state. This section shall apply to such liquors intended for personal use as well as otherwise, and to interstate, as well as intrastate, shipments or carriage. Any person violating this section shall be guilty of a misdemeanor, and, upon conviction, shall be fined not less than one hundred dollars nor more than two hundred dollars and in addition thereto may be imprisoned not more than three months; provided, however, that druggists may receive and possess pure grain alcohol, wine and such preparations as may be sold by druggists for the special purpose and in the manner as set forth in sections four and twenty-four."
Van Winkle v. State, 27 Del. 578; Adams Express Co. v. Commonwealth, 154 Ky. 462; Adams Express Co. v. Commonwealth, 160 Ky. 66; Palmer v. Southern Express Co., 129 Tenn. 116; Ex Parte Peede, 75 Tex.Crim.Rep. 247.
In re Rahrer, 140 U. S. 545; Rhodes v. Iowa, 170 U. S. 412; American Express Co. v. Iowa, 196 U. S. 133; Pabst Brewing Co. v. Crenshaw, 198 U. S. 17; Rosenberger v. Pacific Express Co., 241 U. S. 48.

References: v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v.