Court Opinion

ID: 9868279
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-26 18:27:19.251992+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:45:48.896228
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Cothran :
I concur in this judgment. The second section of the Eighteenth amendment evidently was adopted, with this idea and purpose in view: It had been decided by. the Supreme Court of the United States, particularly in cases involving interstate commerce transactions and liabilities connected therewith, that when Congress took over a certain field of operations, its jurisdiction was not only paramount but exclusive. It was accordingly apprehended that the effect of the prohibition amendment and congressional legislation appropriáte thereto would have been the same upon prohibition legislation by the State, in the absence of k provision limiting the application of that principle. The purpose of the section therefore was, and in my opinion the effect is, to leave to the several States the legislative power to enact or enforce any law, not in conflict with section 1 of the amendment, intended and calculated to enforce the prohibition declared in this section. This would apply to enactments of this character in force at the time of the adoption of the amendment, as well as to those subsequently adojpted by the several States. Jones v. Hicks (Ga.) 104 S. E. 771; State v. Fore (N. C.) 105 S. E. 334; Ex parte Ramsey (D. C.) 265 Fed. 953. If the amendment had not been adopted, Congress could not have acted at all, for the subject-matter was exclusively within the police power of the States; with the amendment unlimited, Congress alone could have acted; with the amendment limited as it is, both Congress and the several States may act in legislating for the purpose of enforcing the prohibition declared.
As the Chief Justice shows, there is no question in this case as to a conflict between the State statutes and the *529amendriient, nor, I may add, between them and congressional legislation. Should there appear in a State statute a conflict between it and the amendment, the statute would, of course, have to give way; should it appear between it and congressional legislation, the interesting question of the grant of “concurrent power” to Congress and the several States, by the amendment, so learnedly and entertainingly discussed by Justice McKenna, dissenting, in State v. Palmer, 253 U. S. 350, 40 Sup. Ct. 486, 588, 64 L. Ed. 946, will arise, the effect of which need not now be anticipated.