Court Opinion

ID: 9419440
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:49:31.197941+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:18.113194
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Frankfurter,
concurring:
1. After as thorough a consideration as it ever gave to a problem, this Court, in a long series of cases beginning with Bowman v. Chicago & North Western Ry. Co., 125 U. S. 465, decided that intoxicating liquor is a legitimate subject of commerce, as much so as cabbages and candlesticks, and as such within the protection of the Commerce Clause. In the absence of regulation by Congress, the movement of intoxicants in interstate commerce like that of all other merchantable goods was “free from all.state control.” Clark Distilling Co. v. Western Maryland Ry. Co., 242 U. S. 311, 323, 327, citing Leisy v. Hardin, 135 U. S. 100; In re Rahrer, 140 U. S. 545; Vance v. Vandercook Company (No. 1), 170 U. S. 438; Rhodes v. Iowa, 170 U. S. 412. All of these decisions are still on the books. And so, before the Twenty-first Amendment displaced the Eighteenth, Mr. Justice Holmes was able to say: “I cannot for a moment believe that apart from the Eight*140eenth Amendment special constitutional principles exist against strong drink. The fathers of the Constitution so far as I know approved it.” Knickerbocker Ice Co. v. Stewart, 253 U. S. 149, 169.
2. If then the Commerce Clause be the measure of State action, such a requirement as the posting of a bond for transportation of goods from without Virginia would be beyond Virginia’s powers even if the shipment of the liquor were for delivery into Virginia. Heyman v. Southern Ry. Co., 203 U. S. 270; Adams Express Co. v. Kentucky, 206 U. S. 129. Cases like California v. Thompson, 313 U. S. 109, which recognize the power of States to regulate local activities by taxation or otherwise related even though they be to interstate commerce, but none of which was concerned with restricting the through-passage of goods, liquor or any other, afford no basis for suggesting that a State has power to license the movement of goods in interstate commerce on oppressive or prohibitive terms. A fortiori, the Commerce Clause would prohibit and not permit such legislation as is before us in the case of liquor arriving in Virginia for ultimate delivery without. Heyman v. Hays, 236 U. S. 178.
3. In the light of the uniform current of decisions under the Commerce Clause prior to the Twenty-first Amendment, the Virginia legislation could not survive as to shipments bound beyond its borders. If the legislation is valid, as I believe it to be, it must be solely because the range of State control over liquor has been extended by the Twenty-first Amendment beyond the permissive bounds of the Commerce Clause.
4. The legislation is sustainable under the Twenty-first Amendment on one of two considerations. It is a notorious fact that State prohibition laws were to no small measure evaded by illicit diversion of liquor claimed to be transported through a State. Since we are dealing with *141a constitutional amendment that should be broadly and colloquially interpreted, liquor that enters a State in the manner in which the liquor here came into Virginia may, without undue liberty with the English language, be deemed to be for “delivery” there even though it is consigned for another State. The Twenty-first Amendment prohibits the “transportation or importation into any State ... of intoxicating liquors, in violation of the laws thereof,” not when the liquor is for delivery and use but for “delivery or use therein.” In other words, liquor need not be intended for consumption in a State to be deemed to be imported into the State and therefore subject to control by that State. The decision in Collins v. Yosemite Park Co., 304 U. S. 518, has nothing whatever to do with the relation of the Commerce Clause to the power given the States by the Twenty-first Amendment to control the liquor traffic. That was a suit “to restrain enforcement' of the [California] Alcoholic Beverage Control Act within Yosemite Park, on the theory that the Park is within the exclusive jurisdiction of the United States.” All that was there decided, after extended consideration of the relation of the United States to the Yosemite Park, was that the United States did exercise exclusive jurisdiction over the land ceded by California to the Federal Government for park purposes, and that of course when “exclusive jurisdiction is in the United States, without power in the State to regulate alcoholic beverages, the XXI Amendment is not applicable.” 304 U. S. at 538. State control must yield to superior federal power, but State control by one State, since the Twenty-first Amendment, need not yield to State control by another State.
5. In the alternative, since Virginia has power to prohibit the importation of liquor within that Commonwealth, it may effectuate that purpose by measures *142deemed by it necessary to prevent evasion of its policy by pretended through-shipments. In a word, having the power to prohibit liquor from coming into a State, a State may take measures against frustration of that power by resort to the claim that liquor passing through a State enjoys the protection of the Commerce Clause. If a State may take these protective measures, as surely it may, who is to decide what measures are necessary for its protection? If a State may ask for the posting of a $1,000 bond, may she not require a $10,000 bond? If a State should urge that its experience shows that any regulatory system is ineffective because illicit diversion is too resourceful for control by mere regulation and requires prohibition, who is to say, in view of the history embedded in the Twenty-first Amendment, that a State may not fairly act on such a judgment? Are not these peculiarly political, that is legislative, questions which were not meant by the Twenty-first Amendment to continue to be the fruitful apple of judicial discord, as they were before the Twenty-first Amendment?
6. It is now suggested that a State must keep within “the limits of reasonable necessity” and that this Court must judge whether or not Virginia has adopted “regulations reasonably necessary to enforce its local liquor laws.” Such canons of adjudication open wide the door of conflict and confusion which have in the past characterized the liquor controversies in this Court and in no small measure formed part of the unedifying history which led first to the Eighteenth and then to the Twenty-first Amendment.
7. Less than six years ago this Court rejected the impossible task of deciding, instead of leaving it for legislatures to decide, what constitutes a “reasonable regulation” of the liquor traffic, The issue was fairly presented in Mo-*143honey v. Triner Corp., 304 U. S. 401. And this was the holding:
“We are asked to limit the power conferred by the Amendment so that only those importations may be forbidden which, in the opinion of the Court, violate a reasonable regulation of the liquor traffic. To do so would, as stated in the Young’s Market case, [299 U. S. 59] p. 62, ‘involve not a construction of the Amendment, but a rewriting of it.’ ” 304 U. S. at 404.
Therefore if a State, in aid of its powers of prohibition, may regulate, without let or hindrance by courts regarding the “reasonableness” of a regulation, it may do so whether the liquor is openly consigned for consumption within it or intended for consumption there although, by subterfuge too difficult to check, nominally destined elsewhere.
8. Fuller consideration has therefore convinced me that the power exercised by the State in Duckworth v. Arkansas, 314 U. S. 390, as well as in this case must rest on the authority given to the States by the Twenty-first Amendment. And since Virginia derives the power to legislate as she did from the Twenty-first Amendment, the Commerce Clause does not come into play. So this Court has twice ruled. “Since the Twenty-first Amendment, as held in the Young case [299 U. S. 59], the right of a state to prohibit or regulate the importation of intoxicating liquor is not limited by the commerce clause.” Indianapolis Brewing Co. v. Liquor Commission, 305 U. S. 391, 394; see also Finch & Co. v. McKittrick, 305 U. S. 395, 398.