Court Opinion

ID: 9417469
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 20:18:08.19102+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:21:43.569840
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Field
delivered the following separate opinion.
I dissent from the judgment in the last case, the one coming from the Circuit Court of the United States.
I agree to so much of the opinion as asserts that there is nothing in the Constitution or laws of the United States affecting the validity of any act of Kansas prohibiting the sale of intoxicating liquors manufactured in the State, except under proper regulations for the protection of the health and morals of the people. But I am not prepared to say that the State can prohibit the manufacture of such liquors within its limits if they are intended for exportation, or forbid their sale within its limits, under like regulations, if Congress has authorized their importation, though the act of Kansas is broad enough to include both such manufacture and sale. The right to import an article of merchandise, recognized as such by the commercial world — whether the right be given by act of Congress or by treaty with a foreign country — would seem necessarily to carry the right to sell the article when imported. In Brown v. Maryland, 12 Wheat. 4A7, Chief Justice Marshall, in delivering the opinion of this court, said as follows: “Sale is the object of importation, and is an essential ingredient of that intercourse of which importation constitutes a part. It is as essential an ingredient, as indispensable to the existence of the entire thing, *676then, as importation itself. It must be considered as a component part of the power to regulate commerce. Congress has a right, not only to authorize importation, but to authorize the importer to sell.”
If one State can forbid the sale within its limits of an imported article, so may all the States, each selecting a different article. There would then be little uniformity of regulations with respect to articles of foreign commerce imported into different States, and the same may be also said of regulations with respect to articles of interstate commerce. And we know it was one of the objects of the formation of the Federal Constitution to secure uniformity of commercial regulations against discriminating state legislation. The construction of the commercial clause of the Constitution, upon which the License cases in the 7th of Howard were decided, appears to me to have been substantially abandoned in later decisions. Hall v. De Cuir, 95 U.S. 485; Welton v. State of Missouri, 91 U.S. 275; County of Mobile v. Kimball, 102 U.S. 691; Transportation Co. v. Parkersburgh, 107 U.S. 691; Gloucester Ferry Co. v. Pennsylvania, 114 U.S. 196; Wabash, St. Louis & Pacific Railway Co. v. Illinois, 118 U.S. 557. I make this reservation that I may not hereafter be deemed concluded by a general concurrence in the opinion of the majority.
I do not agree to what is said with reference to the case from the United States Circuit Court. That was a suit in equity brought for the abatement of the brewery owned by the defendants. It is based upon clauses in the thirteenth section of the act of Kansas, which are as follows:
“All places where intoxicating liquors are manufactured, sold, bartered, or given away in violation of any of the provisions of this act, or where intoxicating liquors are kept for sale, barter, or delivery in violation of this act, are hereby declared to be common nuisances; and upon the judgment of any court having jurisdiction finding such place to be a nuisance under this section, the sheriff, his deputy, or' under sheriff; or any constable of the proper county, or marshal of. any city where the same is located, shall be directed to shut *677up and abate such, place by talcing possession thereof and destroying all intoxicating liquors found therein, together with all signs, screens, bars, bottles, glasses, and other property used in keeping and maintaining said nuisance; and the. owner or keeper thereof shall, upon conviction, be adjudged guilty of maintaining a common nuisance, and shall be punished by a fine of not less than one hundred dollars nor more than five hundred dollars, and by imprisonment in the county jail not less than thirty days nor more than ninety days. The Attorney General, county attorney, or any citizen of the county where such nuisance exists, or is kept, or is maintained, may maintain an action- in the name of the State to abate and perpetually enjoin the same. The injunction shall be granted at the commencement of the action, and no bond shall be required.”
By a previous section all malt, vinous, and fermented liquors áre classed as intoxicating liquors, and their manufacture, barter, and sale are equally prohibited. By the thirteenth section, as is well said by counsel, the legislature, without notice to the owner or hearing of any kind, declares every place where such liquors are sold, bartered, or given away, or kept for sale, barter, or delivery — in this case a brewery, where beer was manufactured and sold, which, up to, the passage of the act, was a lawful industry — to be a common nuisance; and then prescribes what shall follow, upon a court having jurisdiction finding one of such places to be what the legislature has already pronounced it. The court is not to determine whether the place is a common nuisance in fact, but is to find it to be so if it comes within the definition of the statute, and, having thus found it, the executive officers of the court are to be directed to shut up and abate the place by taking possession of it; and, ás though this were not sufficient security against the continuance of the business, they are to be required to destroy all the liquor found therein, and all other property used in keeping and maintaining the nuisance. It matters not whether they are of such a character as could be used in any other business, or be of value for any other purposes. No discretion is left in the judge or in the officer.
*678These clauses appear to me to deprive one who owns a brewery and manufactures beer for sale, like the defendants, of property without due process of law. The destruction to be ordered is not as a forfeiture upon conviction of any offence, but merely because the legislature has so commanded. Assuming, which is not conceded, that the legislature, in the exercise of that undefined power of the State, called its police power, may, without compensation to the owner, deprive him of the use of his brewery for the purposes for which it was constructed under the sanction of the law, and for which alone it is valuable, I cannot see upon what principle, after closing the brewery, and thus putting an end to its use in the future for manufacturing spirits, it can order the destruction of the liquor already manufactured, which it admits by its legislation may be valuable for some purposes, and allows to be sold for those purposes. Nor can I see how the protection of the health and morals of the people of the State can require the destruction of property like bottles, glasses, and other utensils, which may be used for many lawful purposes. It has heretofore been supposed to be an established principle, that where there is a power to abate a nuisance, the abatement must be limited by its necessity, and no wanton or unnecessary injury can be committed to the property or rights of individuals. Thus, if the nuisance consists in the use to which a building is put, the remedy is to stop such use, not to tear down or to demolish the building itself, or to destroy property found within it. Babcock v. City of Buffalo, 56 N.Y. 268; Chenango Bridge Co. v. Paige, 83 N.Y. 178, 189. The decision of the court, as it seems to me, reverses this principle.
It is plain that great wrong will often be done to manufacturers of liquors, if legislation like that embodied in this thirteenth section can be upheld. The Supreme Court of Kansas admits that the legislature of the State, in destroying the values of such kinds of property, may have gone to the utmost verge of constitutional authority. In my opinion it has passed beyond that verge, and crossed the line which separates regulation from confiscation.