Court Opinion

ID: 9419439
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:49:31.195543+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:18.111484
License: Public Domain

Me. Justice Black,
concurring:
I am not sure that state statutes regulating intoxicating liquor should ever be invalidated by this Court under the Commerce Clause except where they conflict with valid federal statutes. Cf. dissenting opinions, McCarroll v. Dixie Greyhound Lines, 309 U. S. 176, 183; Gwin, White & Prince v. Henneford, 305 U. S. 434, 442; Adams Manufacturing Co. v. Storen, 304 U. S. 307, 316. The Twenty-first Amendment has placed liquor in a category different from that of other articles of commerce. Though the precise amount of power it has left in Congress to regulate liquor under the Commerce Clause has not been marked out by decisions, this much is settled: local, not national, regulation of the liquor traffic is now the general Constitutional policy. Ziffrin, Inc. v. Beeves, 308 U. S. 132; Indianapolis Brewing Co. v. Liquor Control Comm’n, 305 U. S. 391; State Board of Equalisation v. Young’s Market Co., 299 U. S. 59.
Whatever limited force the Commerce Clause may retain with regard to the liquor traffic, it should not require the invalidation of the Virginia statutes here involved, *139which do not conflict with any Act of Congress, and which are designed to enforce local liquor policies. Virginia seems to think that, unless adequate precautionary regulations are devised and enforced, liquor shipments ostensibly being transported through her territory to a neighboring state could be diverted for bootleg purposes contrary to her laws. Such precautionary regulations must come from either Virginia or the federal government. The legislature of Virginia has provided them; the Congress has not. This Court could invalidate the Virginia regulations, but only the Congress could devise and substitute effective federal regulations to take their place. I therefore agree with the Court “that Virginia could conclude, in the absence of contrary federal legislation, that she could not safely permit the transportation of liquor through her territory by those who concededly mean to break federal laws and the laws of a neighboring state.”