Prohibition - Facts & Summary - HISTORY.com Google Origins of Prohibition In the 1820s and ’30s, a wave of religious revivalism swept the United States, leading to increased calls for temperance, as well as other “perfectionist” movements such as the abolition of slavery. In 1838, the state of Massachusetts passed a temperance law banning the sale of spirits in less than 15-gallon quantities; though the law was repealed two years later, it set a precedent for such legislation. Maine passed the first state prohibition law in 1846, and a number of other states had followed suit by the time the Civil War began in 1861. Did You Know? In 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt defeated the incumbent President Herbert Hoover, who once called Prohibition "the great social and economic experiment, noble in motive and far reaching in purpose." Some say FDR celebrated the repeal of Prohibition by enjoying a dirty martini, his preferred drink. By the turn of the century, temperance societies were a common fixture in communities across the United States.

Women played a strong role in the temperance movement, as alcohol was seen as a destructive force in families and marriages. In 1906, a new wave of attacks began on the sale of liquor, led by the Anti-Saloon League (established in 1893) and driven by a reaction to urban growth, as well as the rise of evangelical Protestantism and its view of saloon culture as corrupt and ungodly. In addition, many factory owners supported prohibition in their desire to prevent accidents and increase the efficiency of their workers in an era of increased industrial production and extended working hours. Passage of the Prohibition Amendment In 1917, after the United States entered World War I , President Woodrow Wilson instituted a temporary wartime prohibition in order to save grain for producing food. That same year, Congress submitted the 18th Amendment, which banned the manufacture, transportation and sale of intoxicating liquors, for state ratification. Though Congress had stipulated a seven-year time limit for the process, the amendment received the support of the necessary three-quarters of U.S. states in just 11 months.

Ratified on January 29, 1919, the 18th Amendment went into effect a year later, by which time no fewer than 33 states had already enacted their own prohibition legislation. In October 1919, Congress passed the National Prohibition Act, which provided guidelines for the federal enforcement of Prohibition. Championed by Representative Andrew Volstead of Mississippi , the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, the legislation was more commonly known as the Volstead Act. Enforcement of Prohibition Both federal and local government struggled to enforce Prohibition over the course of the 1920s. Enforcement was initially assigned to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), and was later transferred to the Justice Department. In general, Prohibition was enforced much more strongly in areas where the population was sympathetic to the legislation–mainly rural areas and small towns–and much more loosely in urban areas. Despite very early signs of success, including a decline in arrests for drunkenness and a reported 30 percent drop in alcohol consumption, those who wanted to keep drinking found ever-more inventive ways to do it.

The illegal manufacturing and sale of liquor (known as “bootlegging”) went on throughout the decade, along with the operation of “speakeasies” (stores or nightclubs selling alcohol), the smuggling of alcohol across state lines and the informal production of liquor (“moonshine” or “bathtub gin”) in private homes. In addition, the Prohibition era encouraged the rise of criminal activity associated with bootlegging. The most notorious example was the Chicago gangster Al Capone , who earned a staggering $60 million annually from bootleg operations and speakeasies. Such illegal operations fueled a corresponding rise in gang violence, including the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre in Chicago in 1929, in which several men dressed as policemen (and believed to be have associated with Capone) shot and killed a group of men in an enemy gang. Prohibition Comes to an End The high price of bootleg liquor meant that the nation’s working class and poor were far more restricted during Prohibition than middle or upper class Americans. Even as costs for law enforcement, jails and prisons spiraled upward, support for Prohibition was waning by the end of the 1920s.

In addition, fundamentalist and nativist forces had gained more control over the temperance movement, alienating its more moderate members. With the country mired in the Great Depression by 1932, creating jobs and revenue by legalizing the liquor industry had an undeniable appeal. Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt ran for president that year on a platform calling for Prohibition’s appeal, and easily won victory over the incumbent President Herbert Hoover . FDR’s victory meant the end for Prohibition, and in February 1933 Congress adopted a resolution proposing a 21st Amendment to the Constitution that would repeal the 18th. The amendment was submitted to the states, and in December 1933 Utah provided the 36th and final necessary vote for ratification. Though a few states continued to prohibit alcohol after Prohibition’s end, all had abandoned the ban by 1966.

Tags The United States Constitution - The Amendments in History The AMENDMENTS IN HISTORY The Bill of Rights (Amendments 1-10) Proposed September 25, 1789; Adopted December 15, 1791 It's almost impossible to imagine the United States (U.S.) Constitution without having a Bill of Rights , but when it was first being drafted, a majority of the Founding Fathers didn't think it was necessary. However, there were a few men who believed it was so significant that they refused to sign the Constitution because it didn't have one. Three famous refusers were George Mason of Virginia, Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts, and Edmund Randolph of Virginia. As it turned out, these three were not the only ones who thought this was an issue. When State ratification messages started arriving with their own commentary and suggestions for individual rights, Congress began to consider the idea of a "Bill of Rights." James Madison was responsible for drafting the document, and originally wrote 17 sections. This number was whittled down to 12, but only ten of which were ratified by a majority of the States. These final ten became the first ten Amendments to the United States (U.S.) Constitution.

Sovereign Immunity of States (Amendment 11) Proposed March 4, 1794; Adopted February 7, 1795 The Eleventh Amendment to the United States Constitution was written as a direct response to the 1793 Supreme Court case known as Chisholm v. Georgia in which a citizen from South Carolina, Alexander Chisholm attempted to sue the state of Georgia over finances. Georgia refused to show up in court, as the leaders felt its being sued in the first place was a violation of its state sovereignty. Despite the complaints of Georgia, the Court ruled in favor of Chisholm. This amendment clarified Article III, Section 2 of the Constitution and removed federal jurisdiction in cases where citizens of one state or of foreign countries attempt to sue another state. Of Presidents, Senators, and Members of Congress (Amendments 12, 17, 20, 22, 25, & 27) The Twelfth Amendment (Proposed December 9, 1803; Adopted June 15, 1804) changed the way the President and the Vice President were elected.

Previously, according to Article I, Section 1, Clause 3 of the Constitution, the individual at the end of the election with the most electoral votes became president, and the first runner up became Vice President. Well, this logic worked excellently until the election year of 1796 when Federalist candidate John Adams was chosen as second President of the United States, and his rival, Thomas Jefferson, became Vice President. John Adams and Thomas Jefferson William Jennings Bryan Because Congress feared this sort of development would inspire future " coups " where a Vice President would rise against the President so that he could take his place, the clause was amended. Instead of casting two ballots for the office of the President, electors now cast a single ballot for the President and another for the Vice President. It was a better solution for everybody. Amendment Seventeen (Proposed May 13, 1912; Adopted April 8, 1913) established the direct election of senators by popular vote, thanks to the efforts of Progressives like William Jennings Bryan. Previously, in Article I, Section 3, Clauses 1-2 of the United States Constitution, Senators were elected by the legislatures of their states.

The Progressives argued that this setup was leading to " legislative corruption " and "electoral deadlocks." What these reformers were drawing attention to was the rising tendency of Senatorial elections to be "bought and sold," instead of being awarded for merit and competency (an issue brought to the silver screen by director Frank Capra in the film "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.") Bribery, surprisingly enough, was not uncommon in early twentieth century politics. The other issue, electoral deadlock, arose because the legislature simply couldn't agree on who to choose. The original method presupposed that they would able to agree on a candidate, but as the history of politics demonstrates, this wasn't likely. Even now, politicians rarely agree on anything. However, thanks to Amendment Seventeen, they no longer have to. Twentieth Amendment The Twentieth Amendment (Proposed March 2, 1932; Adopted January 23, 1933) to the United States Constitution shortened the length of time between election day and the beginning of Presidential and Congressional Terms . The Constitution originally provided four months of time between election and active service, with elections in November and terms not beginning until March 4.

In the last part of the Eighteenth century and the early part of the Nineteenth century, this allowed for new leaders to have enough time to prepare for a complete alteration in their lifestyle. As time went on, and transportation and technology became more readily accessible, this lapse of time was no longer entirely necessary. Instead, it became restrictive, as seen in the cases of Abraham Lincoln at the outbreak of the Civil War and Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the early days of the Great Depression . Thus, Amendment Twenty reduced the frequency of "lame duck" issues in the Presidential, Vice Presidential, and Congressional Offices, and allowed new incumbents to handle any rising crises in a much faster than was before possible after the start of a new term. George Washington The Twenty-Second Amendment (Proposed March 21, 1947; Adopted February 27, 1951) dictated term limits of the President, stating that no person shall be elected more than twice, and if they have already served for more than two years, they cannot be elected more than once. This was a precedent practiced by the Founding Fathers, most famously in the George Washington's Farewell Address of 1796.

These men feared that if any man were to exceed two terms in office, it would give him the opportunity to become a despot, which is one of the things they were trying to avoid. They didn't want to leave too much power in the hands of single person. Few presidents sought out a third term, and those who did (Ulysses Grant, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, e.g.) were unsuccessful. It wasn't until Franklin D. Roosevelt that the United States had a president who would serve three terms. He had been elected to a fourth, but died in office before its completion. Amendment Twenty-two made it impossible for this to ever happen again. Amendment Twenty-Five (Proposed July 6, 1965; Adopted February 10, 1967) handles the matter of succession to the Presidency and to the office of the Vice President. Although the issues of successeion had already been settled several times in practice (i.e. The " Tyler Precedent "), Article II, Section 1, Clause 6 remained unclear.

The matter had been sitting on the table in Congress for some time, but as more instances of Presidential and Vice Presidential vacancies happened, the issue became a higher priority. Before the new amendment, the office of Vice President had been vacant sixteen times due to the death or resignation of either the President or Vice President, which is no small amount. Twenty-Seventh Amendment with Official Seal The Twenty-Seventh Amendment (proposed September 25, 1789; Adopted May 7, 1992) was one of the earliest Amendments to be proposed, but is the very last to be adopted. James Madison was the one who first proposed the amendment, but since the document had no "expiration date" the States could ultimately ratify it at any point, which eventually they did. This rationale was backed by the decision of the 1939 case Coleman v. Miller which decided that unless a proposed amendment specified a ratification deadline, it would be open inevitably. Thus, Amendment Twenty-Seven, clarifying that Congressional salaries would not go into effect until the beginning of the next set of terms, was enacted 203 years after it was first proposed.

The First Vote for Newly Freed Americans Civil War Reconstruction (Amendments 13, 14, & 15) This group of Amendments are referred to as the " Reconstruction Amendments ," as they were adopted in the aftermath of the United States Civil War. These amendments were monumental, because where the Bill of Rights protected the people from the federal government, Amendments 13, 14, and 15 protected them from the government of their states . The Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution ended slavery in the United States. Although President Abraham Lincoln's 1863 executive order, the Emancipation Proclamation , freed slaves in the Confederate States during the war, it did not go as far as to outlaw slavery and involuntary servitude entirely. Until the amendment was enacted, they weren't yet free men and women. When Amendment Thirteen was adopted, making slavery illegal in the United States, it became the first new Amendment to be adopted in 60 years. However, it didn't end the issues in the states, a series of " Black Codes" were introduced, mainly in the South, forcing Congress to add two more amendments.

Amendment Fourteen (Proposed June 13, 1866; Adopted July 9, 1868) was the second of the three Reconstruction Amendments and came in three parts: The Citizenship Clause, The Due Process Clause, and the Equal Protection Clause. Even though the Emancipation Proclamation had freed the slaves, and the Thirteenth Amendment had secured their freedom, many individuals and organizations throughout the United States continued to treat Black Americans as if they didn't belong, like the color of their skin continued to make them inferior regardless of their new Constitutional liberties. This is because they were emancipated, but not yet full citizens. The Fourteenth Amendment was enacted as a direct response to the serious issues free black men and women were facing under the "Black Codes." The decision of the 1857 Supreme Court Case Dred Scott v. Sandford stated that slaves were neither protected by the Constitution, nor were they U.S. citizens. As it turned out, this historic case went down in history as the worst Supreme Court decision ever made, and the Citizenship Clause reversed the Dred Scott Decision declaring that all persons born or naturalized in the United States, regardless of race or ethnicity, would be citizens.

Freed Slaves Vote in New Orleans The Due Process Clause and the Equal Protection Clause were in the same vein, protecting the rights of life, liberty, and property of all United States citizens. Under the Black Codes, newly free men and women had no guarantee that their property wouldn't be seized or that they would not be arrested on arbitrary grounds. The Due Process Clause gave them the confidence that they too were protected by the Constitution, and the Equal Protection Clause ensured equal protection under the laws of the state. The last of the Reconstruction Amendments, The Fifteenth Amendment (Proposed February 26, 1869; Adopted February 3, 1870) gave all male citizens of the United States, regardless of "race, color, or previous condition" of servitude the right to vote. Women would not have the right to vote until 50 years later. Income Tax Amendment Income Tax (Amendment 16) Proposed July 12, 1909; Adopted February 3, 1913 The Sixteenth Amendment to the United States (U.S.) Constitution gave Congress the right to collect income tax without basing it on population.

This Amendment has been the target of a great deal of criticism over the last 100 years, but these objections haven't stood up in court. So, the Sixteenth Amendment will most likely be around for many years to come. The Short Reign of Prohibition (Amendments 18 & 21) Three Men Pour Alcohol into the Streets during Prohibition The Eighteenth Amendment (Proposed December 18, 1917; Adopted January 16, 1919) effectively outlawed the alcohol industry. Once the amendment was adopted, nobody could buy, sell, or manufacture alcoholic drinks; but that didn't mean they couldn't drink it. It was called Prohibition, one of the most peculiar times in American history. It all started with the efforts of organizations like the Women's Christian Temperance Union and the Anti-Saloon League . These groups managed to convince the federal government of the "corruption" of the sale of alcohol, explaining it as a cause of the rise of domestic violence and saloon inspired political corruption. Support for Prohibition was strongest in the South, where conservative Christianity played a large role.

Even after the Amendment was enacted in 1919, along with the Volstead Act in October of that same year, the alcohol industry didn't stop. Instead, it just went underground. Rumor has it that anywhere between 30,000 and 100,000 speakeasies open up in New York City alone. Chicago was another hot spot for the underground manufacture and sale of alcohol, which was overseen by the famous gangster Al Capone . With crime getting out of hand, and police authorities unable to gain control over the situation, Congress proposed and adopted the Twenty-First Amendment (Proposed February 30, 1933; Adopted December 5, 1933). This amendment repealed the Eighteenth Amendment and the Prohibition of Alcohol, becoming the first amendment, and the only one to date, to repeal a previous amendment.

Voting Rights and Restrictions (Amendments 19, 23, 24, and 26) Suffragettes Encourage Women to Vote After 50 years of waiting, women finally got the right to vote in the United States with the Nineteenth Amendment (Proposed June 4, 1919; Adopted August 18, 1920). This development came from the work of the Suffragettes in the Women's Rights Movement of the early twentieth century. Famous Suffragettes Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton led the movement, and together they drafted the amendment which would become Amendment Nineteen: "Universal Suffrage." Amendment Twenty Three (Proposed June 16, 1960; Adopted March 29, 1961) address the voting rights of a different group of people, namely the residents of the nation's capitol: the District of Columbia. Before the enactment of this amendment, people living in Washington D.C. were forbidden to vote for the President or Vice President, as they had no representation in the electorate. Now, like the state with the smallest population, Wyoming, each election D.C.

residents have three electoral representatives. The Twenty-fourth Amendment (Proposed September 14, 1962; Adopted January 23, 1964) further protects the votes of free men and women by forbidding Congress and the States from charging poll tax for voting. Similar to the Black Codes of the Reconstruction era, Poll Taxes were commonly used to keep black Americans from voting. The timing of Amendment Twenty-Four's adoption coincides with the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, when attention was on the unequal treatment of black American citizens in many of the Southern states. A Vietnam War Protestor Gives a Flower to Soldier The final act of Congress to date regarding voting rights and restriction is the adoption of Amendment Twenty-Six (Proposed March 23, 1971; Adopted July 1, 1971). At that time, massive protest movements against the Vietnam War had swept the nation's colleges and universities. Prior to the adoption of this amendment, men were being drafted into service before they were even legal to vote . They were risking their lives without having any bearing on the actions of the men sending them to do so.

Thus, the amendment set the voting age at 18, forbidding Congress or the States to set it any higher. *All Images are courtesy of Wikipedia commons - licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share- Alike License 3.0. Amendment XXI: Repeal of Prohibition Amendment XXI: Repeal of Prohibition Repeal of Prohibition Section 1. The eighteenth article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States is hereby repealed. Section 2. The transportation or importation into any State, Territory, or Possession of the United States for delivery or use therein of intoxicating liquors, in violation of the laws thereof, is hereby prohibited. Section 3. This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by conventions in the several States, as provided in the Constitution, within seven years from the date of the submission hereof to the States by the Congress. Amendment XXI When the nation repealed Prohibition via the Twenty-first Amendment in 1933, it vested primary control over alcoholic beverages in the states.

The common understanding of the framers of the Twenty-first Amendment was that it grants each state the power to regulate alcoholic beverages within its borders without intrusion by federal law or regulation. The question remains, however, as to how much and what kind of federal intrusion the amendment blocks. The Twenty-first Amendment has three parts. Section 1 explicitly repealed the Eighteenth Amendment and brought an end to Prohibition. Accordingly, because many saw the Twenty-first Amendment as nothing but a repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment, Congress passed the resolution without much substantive debate. Most of the legislative debate centered on the issue of saloons and the ratification process codified in Section 3 of the amendment, which mandated the use of state conventions. The amendment was passed by the Senate on February 16, 1933, and by the House four days later. It became law on December 5, 1933. In the original resolution there was an additional section, which granted Congress and the states "concurrent power to regulate or prohibit the sale of intoxicating liquors to be drunk on the premises where sold." This provision was designed primarily to authorize the prohibition of saloons.

But Members of Congress finally agreed that such regulation belonged with the states, and the section was removed. Section 2 became the Twenty-first Amendment's primary source of judicial conflict. The question was whether the amendment gave the states absolute control over alcohol, notwithstanding the Commerce Clause and the Import-Export Clause, or whether the amendment permitted the states only enough autonomy to be dry without infringing on the scope of the rest of the Constitution. The amendment tracks very closely the language of a pre-Prohibition federal statute, the Webb-Kenyon Act (1913), current version at 27 U.S.C. Â§ 122 (1994), that gave states power to tax alcoholic beverages not only when sold in state, but also when sold through the mail in interstate commerce. In State Board of Equalization v. Young's Market Co. (1936) and in Ziffrin, Inc. v. Reeves (1939), the Supreme Court originally interpreted the Twenty-first Amendment as an absolute exception to the Commerce Clause. However, this changed in 1964 with a string of Twenty-first Amendment cases. In Hostetter v. Idlewild Bon Voyage Liquor Corp.

(1964), Justice Potter Stewart, writing for the majority, argued forcefully that the Twenty-first Amendment was not an absolute exception to the Commerce Clause as far as liquor was concerned. Likewise, in Department of Revenue v. James B. Beam Distilling Co. (1964), the Court held that Kentucky's tax on imported whiskey violated the Import-Export Clause. Justice Stewart, again writing for the majority, stated: To sustain the tax which Kentucky has imposed in this case would require nothing short of squarely holding that the Twenty-first Amendment has completely repealed the Export-Import Clause so far as intoxicants are concerned. Nothing in the language of the Amendment nor in its history leads to such an extraordinary conclusion. This Court has never intimated such a view, and now that the claim for the first time is squarely presented, we expressly reject it. Similarly, in Wisconsin v. Constantineau (1971), the Court held that a Wisconsin statute, which empowered a police chief to post in all local retail liquor outlets a notice forbidding the sale of alcohol to the plaintiff because of his excessive drinking, without giving the plaintiff any advance notice or opportunity to contest it, violated the due process requirements of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, the Supreme Court continued to chip away at the Twenty-first Amendment. See, e.g., United States v. Tax Commission of Mississippi (1975) (holding that the states could not tax the sale of liquor on military bases within their borders because the United States has concurrent jurisdiction over military bases); Craig v. Boren (1976) (noting that the Twenty-first Amendment does not override the equal-protection requirements of the Fourteenth Amendment); California Retail Liquor Dealers Ass'n v. Midcal Aluminum, Inc. (1980) (finding that the Twenty-first Amendment does not protect a state regulation that violates the Sherman Act because of the Supremacy Clause); Larkin v. Grendel's Den, Inc. (1982) (stating that the state may not exercise its powers under the Twenty-first Amendment in a way that impinges the rights protected under the Establishment Clause). But see New York State Liquor Authority v.

Bellanca (1981) (allowing a state to prohibit the sale of liquor on premises where topless dancing occurs because "[w]hatever artistic or communicative value may attach to topless dancing is overcome by the State's exercise of its broad power under the Twenty-first Amendment"). In Capital Cities Cable, Inc. v. Crisp (1984), the Court finally articulated a balancing test to determine when the state's powers under the Twenty-first Amendment trump the Commerce Clause: In such a case, the central question is whether the interests implicated by a state regulation are so closely related to the powers reserved by the Amendment that the regulation may prevail, even though its requirements directly conflict with express federal policies. Utilizing this balancing test in Bacchus Imports, Ltd. v. Dias (1984), the Court struck down a Hawaiian tax law that favored certain liquors that were only manufactured locally because "[s]tate laws that constitute mere economic protectionism are...not entitled to the same deference as laws enacted to combat the perceived evils of an unrestricted traffic in liquor." In 324 Liquor Corp. v.

Duffy (1987), the Court balanced the state's virtually complete control over the liquor distribution system within its borders against the policy behind the Sherman Anti-Trust Act and found the latter of more weight. In a sharp dissent, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, joined by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, rejected the majority's conclusion. The dissent described in detail the legislative history and the subsequent state practices to show that the amendment was designed to give the states absolute control over the manufacturing and distribution of liquor within their borders. The "Senate discussions," she wrote, "clearly demonstrate an intent to confer on States complete and exclusive control over the commerce of liquor." The states understood the meaning as well. Immediately after the ratification of the Twenty-first Amendment, states enacted strong price-control measures, "the very type of statute that this Court strikes down today." The majority opinion answered Justice O'Connor's argument with a one-paragraph footnote that focused on maintaining federal economic power through the Commerce Clause and the Antitrust Laws. That same year in South Dakota v. Dole (1987), the Court held that Congress could use its spending power to regulate indirectly interstate commerce with regard to intoxicating liquors.

In Dole, Congress made certain highway funding contingent upon a state's acceptance of a minimum drinking age of twenty-one years. Justice O'Connor and Justice William J. Brennan, Jr., each filed dissents, with Brennan arguing that the Twenty-first Amendment limited the spending power. In 44 Liquormart, Inc. v. Rhode Island (1996), the Court held that Rhode Island's prohibition against certain advertisements stating the prices of liquor was an abridgment of the First Amendment's protection of free speech. Although the lengthy decision contained several concurring opinions, all nine Justices agreed that the Rhode Island law was not saved by the Twenty-first Amendment. After a number of years in which the Supreme Court pruned state powers under the Twenty-first Amendment, the amendment now leaves a state with the power to become dry if it chooses. Beyond that, however, the Court has held that state control of liquor is subject to federal power under the Commerce Clause (Article I, Section 8, Clause 3), Granholm v.

Heald (2005), the Spending Clause (Article I, Section 8, Clause 1), the First Amendment, and, it follows, the Necessary and Proper Clause (Article I, Section 8, Clause 18) and the Supremacy Clause (Article VI, Clause 2). Regent University School of Law Further Reading Edward Behr, Prohibition: Thirteen Years that Changed America (1997) Thomas Pegram, Battling Demon Rum: The Struggle for a Dry America, 1800â€“1933 (1998) Duncan Baird Douglass, Constitutional Crossroads: Reconciling the Twenty-first Amendment and the Commerce Clause to Evaluate State Regulation of Interstate Commerce in Alcoholic Beverages, 49 Duke L.J. 1619 (2000) John Foust, State Power to Regulate Alcohol Under the Twenty-first Amendment: The Constitutional Implications of the Twenty-first Amendment Enforcement Act, 41 B.C. L. Rev.

659 (2000) John Kobler, Ardent Spirits: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition (reprint 1993) Susan Lorde Martin, Wine Warsâ€”Direct Shipment of Wine: The Twenty-first Amendment, the Commerce Clause, and Consumers' Rights, 38 Am. Business L.J. 1 (2000) Russ Miller, The Wine Is in the Mail: the Twenty-first Amendment and State Laws Against the Direct Shipment of Alcoholic Beverages, 54 Vanderbilt L. Rev. 2495 (2001) Case Law South Dakota v. Dole, 483 U.S. 203 (1987) 44 Liquormart, Inc. v. Rhode Island, 517 U.S. 484 (1996) Craig v. Boren, 429 U.S. 190 (1976) State Board of Equalization v. Young's Market Co., 299 U.S. 59 (1936) Joseph S. Finch & Co. v. McKittrick, 305 U.S.

395 (1939) Ziffrin, Inc. v. Reeves, 308 U.S. 132 (1939) United States v. Frankfort Distilleries, 324 U.S. 293 (1945) Department of Revenue v. James B. Beam Distilling Co., 377 U.S. 341 (1964) Hostetter v. Idlewild Bon Voyage Liquor Corp., 377 U.S. 324 (1964) Wisconsin v. Constantineau, 400 U.S. 433 (1971) United States v. Tax Commission of Mississippi, 421 U.S. 599 (1975) California Retail Liquor Dealers Ass'n v. Midcal Aluminum, Inc., 445 U.S. 97 (1980) New York State Liquor Authority v. Bellanca, 452 U.S. 714 (1981) Larkin v. Grendel's Den, Inc., 459 U.S.

116 (1982) Bacchus Imports, Ltd. v. Dias, 468 U.S. 263 (1984) Capital Cities Cable, Inc. v. Crisp, 467 U.S. 691 (1984) 324 Liquor Corp. v. Duffy, 479 U.S. 335 (1987) Granholm v. Heald, 125 S. Ct. 1885 (2005) Bible Law vs. the United States Constitution: The Christian Perspective, Chapter 30 - Mission to Israel The eighteenth article of the amendment to the Constitution of the United States is hereby repealed. Section 2 The transportation or importation into any state, territory, or possession of the United States, for delivery or use therein of intoxicating liquors, in violation of the laws thereof, is hereby prohibited.

Amendment 21, passed by Congress on February 20, 1933, and ratified on December 5, 1933, repealed the Eighteenth Amendment, which mandated nationwide Prohibition: The Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution had ushered in a period of time known as �Prohibition,� during which the manufacture, distribution, and sale of alcoholic beverages was illegal. Passage of the Eighteenth Amendment in 1919 was the crowning achievement of the temperance movement, but it soon proved highly unpopular. Crime rates soared under Prohibition as gangsters made millions of dollars on illegal alcohol sales, and corruption was rife among law enforcement agencies. 1 See Chapter Twenty-Seven , �Amendment 18: Prohibition: Repealed for Good Reason,� for the Biblical reasons why Amendment 18 should never have been ratified in the first place. The e-book (on CD) A Christian Perspective on the U.S. Constitution The audio CD The Bible vs. The U.S. Constitution (Pts.

1 & 2) End Notes 18th and 21st Amendments - Facts & Summary - HISTORY.com 18th and 21st Amendments A+E Networks Introduction By the late 1800s, prohibition movements had sprung up across the United States, driven by religious groups who considered alcohol, specifically drunkenness, a threat to the nation. The movement reached its apex in 1920 when Congress ratified the 18th Amendment, prohibiting the manufacture, transportation and sale of intoxicating liquors. Prohibition proved difficult to enforce and failed to have the intended effect of eliminating crime and other social problems–to the contrary, it led to a rise in organized crime, as the bootlegging of alcohol became an ever-more lucrative operation. In 1933, widespread public disillusionment led Congress to ratify the 21st Amendment, which repealed Prohibition. Google Origins of Temperance Movement A wave of intense religious revivalism that swept the U.S.

during the 1820s and 30s led to the formation of a number of prohibition movements driven by religious groups who considered alcohol, specifically drunkenness, a “national curse.” (This revivalism also helped inspire the movement to end slavery.) The first temperance legislation appeared in 1838, in the form of a Massachusetts law prohibiting the sale of spirits in less than 15-gallon quantities. Though it was repealed two years later, Maine passed the first state prohibition law in 1846, and by the time the Civil War began, a number of other states had followed suit. Did You Know? Prohibition was known as "the noble experiment." The phrase was coined by President Herbert Hoover, who wrote to an Idaho senator in 1928: "Our country has deliberately undertaken a great social and economic experiment, noble in motive and far-reaching in purpose." As early as 1873, the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) of Ohio called for the abolition of the sale of alcohol.

They were soon joined in the fight by the even more powerful Anti-Saloon League (ASL), founded in 1893 in Ohio but later expanded into a national organization that endorsed political candidates and lobbied for legislation against saloons. Beginning around 1906, the ASL led a renewed call for prohibition legislation at the state level. Through speeches, advertisements and public demonstrations at saloons and bars, prohibition advocates attempted to convince people that that eliminating alcohol from society would eliminate poverty and social vices, such as immoral behavior and physical violence. One prominent temperance advocate, Kentucky-born Carrie Amelia Moore Nation (she called herself “Carry A. Nation”), became known for particularly violent tactics against what she called “evil spirits.” In addition to making protest speeches, Nation was known for breaking saloon windows and mirrors and destroying kegs of beer or whiskey with a hatchet. She was arrested numerous times, and became a household name across the country for her “saloon-smashing” campaign. From State to Federal Prohibition Legislation By 1916, 23 of 48 states had passed anti-saloon legislation. Many went further, prohibiting the manufacture of alcoholic beverages as well.

After the congressional elections that year, “dry” members (as those who favored a national prohibition of alcohol became known) won a two-thirds majority over “wet” in the U.S. Congress. On January 29, 1919, Congress ratified the 18th Amendment, which prohibited the manufacturing, transportation and sale of alcohol within the United States; it would go into effect the following January. Later in 1919, the National Prohibition Act–popularly known as the Volstead Act, after its legislative sponsor, Representative Andrew J. Volstead of Minnesota–was enacted in order to provide the government with the means of enforcing Prohibition. Loopholes in this act–such as the fact that liquor used for medicinal, sacramental or industrial purposes remained legal, as did fruit or grape beverages prepared at home–as well as varying degrees of government support throughout the 1920s hampered the enforcement of Prohibition, and it would remain more of an ideal than a reality. Unexpected Events Under Prohibition, the illegal manufacture and sale of liquor–known as “bootlegging”–occurred on a large scale across the United States.

In urban areas, where the majority of the population opposed Prohibition, enforcement was generally much weaker than in rural areas and smaller towns. Perhaps the most dramatic consequence of Prohibition was the effect it had on organized crime in the United States: as the production and sale of alcohol went further underground, it began to be controlled by the Mafia and other gangs, who transformed themselves into sophisticated criminal enterprises that reaped huge profits from the illicit liquor trade. When it came to its booming bootleg business, the Mafia became skilled at bribing police and politicians to look the other way. Chicago’s Al Capone emerged as the most notorious example of this phenomenon, earning an estimated $60 million annually from the bootlegging and speakeasy operations he controlled. In addition to bootlegging, gambling and prostitution reached new heights during the 1920s as well. A growing number of Americans came to blame Prohibition for this widespread moral decay and disorder–despite the fact that the legislation had intended to do the opposite–and to condemn it as a dangerous infringement on the freedom of the individual.

Calls for Prohibition’s Repeal If public sentiment had turned against Prohibition by the late 1920s, the advent of the Great Depression only hastened its demise, as some argued that the ban on alcohol denied jobs to the unemployed and much-needed revenue to the government. The efforts of the nonpartisan group Americans Against Prohibition Association (AAPA) added to public disillusionment. In 1932, the platform of Democratic presidential candidate Franklin D. Roosevelt included a plank for repealing the 18th Amendment, and his victory that November marked a certain end to Prohibition. In February 1933, Congress adopted a resolution proposing the 21st Amendment to the Constitution, which repealed both the 18th Amendment and the Volstead Act. The resolution required state conventions, rather than the state legislatures, to approve the amendment, effectively reducing the process to a one-state, one-vote referendum rather than a popular vote contest. That December, Utah became the 36th state to ratify the amendment, achieving the necessary majority for repeal. A few states continued statewide prohibition after 1933, but by 1966 all of them had abandoned it.

Since then, liquor control in the United States has largely been determined at the local level. Tags 18th Amendment | Constitution | US Law | LII / Legal Information Institute Amendment XVIII Section 1. After one year from the ratification of this article the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United States and all territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof for beverage purposes is hereby prohibited. Section 2. The Congress and the several states shall have concurrent power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation. Section 3. This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of the several states, as provided in the Constitution, within seven years from the date of the submission hereof to the states by the Congress. Eighteenth Amendment - U.S. Constitution - FindLaw Eighteenth Amendment - U.S. Constitution Amendment Text | Annotations Section 1.

After one year from the ratification of this article the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United States and all territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof for beverage purposes is hereby prohibited. Section 2. The Congress and the several States shall have concurrent power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation. Section 3. This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of the several States, as provided in the Constitution, within seven years from the date of the submission hereof to the States by the Congress. 18th Amendment Annotations Cases relating to this question are presented and discussed under Article V. Enforcement Cases produced by enforcement and arising under the Fourth and Fifth Amendment s are considered in the discussion appearing under the those Amendments.

Repeal This Amendment was repealed by the Twenty-first Amendment, and titles I and II of the National Prohibition Act 1 were subsequently specifically repealed by the act of August 27, 1935, 2 federal prohibition laws effective in various Districts and Territories were repealed as follows: District of Columbia--April 5, 1933, and January 24, 1934; 3 Puerto Rico and Virgin Islands--March 2, 1934; 4 Hawaii--March 26, 1934; 5 and Panama Canal Zone--June 19, 1934. 6 Taking judicial notice of the fact that ratification of the Twenty-first Amendment was consummated on December 5, 1933, the Supreme Court held that the National Prohibition Act, insofar as it rested upon a grant of authority to Congress by the Eighteenth Amendment, thereupon become inoperative, with the result that prosecutions for violations of the National Prohibition Act, including proceedings on appeal, pending on, or begun after, the date of repeal, had to be dismissed for want of jurisdiction.

Only final judgments of conviction rendered while the National Prohibition Act was in force remained unaffected. 7 Likewise a heavy ''special excise tax,'' insofar as it could be construed as part of the machinery for enforcing the Eighteenth Amendment, was deemed to have become inapplicable automatically upon the latter's repeal. 8 However, liability on a bond conditioned upon the return on the day of trial of a vessel seized for illegal transportation of liquor was held not to have been extinguished by repeal when the facts disclosed that the trial took place in 1931 and had resulted in conviction of the crew. The liability became complete upon occurrence of the breach of the express contractual condition and a civil action for recovery was viewed as unaffected by the loss of penal sanctions. 9 Footnotes [Footnote 1] Ch. 85, 41 Stat. 305. [Footnote 2] Ch. 740, 49 Stat. 872. [Footnote 3] Ch. 19, 48 Stat. 25; ch. 4, 48 Stat. 319. [Footnote 4] Ch. 37, 48 Stat. 361. [Footnote 5] Ch.

88, 48 Stat. 467. [Footnote 6] Ch. 657, 48 Stat. 1116. [Footnote 7] United States v. Chambers, 291 U.S. 217, 222 -26 (1934). See also Ellerbee v. Aderhold, 5 F. Supp. 1022 (N.D. Ga. 1934); United States ex rel. Randall v. United States Marshal for Eastern Dist. of New York, 143 F.2d 830 (2d Cir. 1944). The Twenty-first Amendment containing ''no saving clause as to prosecutions for offenses therefore committed,'' these holdings were rendered unavoidable by virtue of the well-established principle that after ''the expiration or repeal of a law, no penalty can be enforced, nor punishment inflicted, for violations of the law committed while it was in force. . . .'' The General Pinkney, 9 U.S. (5 Cr.) 281, 283 (1809), quoted in United States v.

Chambers, supra, 291 U.S. at 223 . [Footnote 8] United States v. Constantine, 296 U.S. 287 (1935). The Court also took the position that even if the statute embodying this ''tax'' had not been ''adopted to penalize violations of the Amendment,'' but merely to obtain a penalty for violations of State liquor laws, ''it ceased to be enforceable at the date of repeal,'' for with the lapse of the unusual enforcement powers contained in the Eighteenth Amendment, Congress could not, without infringing upon powers reserved to the States by the Tenth Amendment, ''impose cumulative penalties above and beyond those specified by State law for infractions of . . . [a] State's criminal code by its own citizens.'' Justice Cardozo, with whom Justices Brandeis and Stone were associated, dissented on the ground that, on its face, the statute levying this ''tax'' was ''an appropriate instrument of . . . fiscal policy. . . . Classification by Congress according to the nature of the calling affected by a tax . . .

does not cease to be permissible because the line of division between callings to be favored and those to be reproved corresponds with a division between innocence and criminality under the statutes of a state.'' Id. 294, 296, 297-98. In earlier cases it was nevertheless recognized that Congress also may tax what it forbids and that the basic tax on distilled spirits remained valid and enforceable during as well as after the life of the Amendment. See United States v. Yuginovich, 256 U.S. 450, 462 (1921); United States v. Stafoff, 260 U.S. 477 (1923); United States v. Rizzo, 297 U.S. 530 (1936). Prohibition: Unintended Consequences | PBS Unintended Consequences details Anti-Saloon League paper, The American Issue, with headline, "U.S.

Is Voted Dry", Anti-Saloon League Museum When the Mayor of Berlin, Gustav Boess, visited New York City in the fall of 1929, one of the questions he had for his host, Mayor James J. Walker, was when Prohibition was to go into effect. The problem was that Prohibition has already been the law of the United States for nearly a decade. That Boess had to ask tells you plenty about how well it was working. The Noble Experiment When the Prohibition era in the United States began on January 19, 1920, a few sage observers predicted it would not go well. Certainly, previous attempts to outlaw the use of alcohol in American history had fared poorly. When a Massachusetts town banned the sale of alcohol in 1844, an enterprising tavern owner took to charging patrons for the price of seeing a striped pig—the drinks came free with the price of admission. When Maine passed a strict prohibition law in 1851, the result was not temperance, but resentment among the city's working class and Irish immigrant population. A deadly riot in Portland in 1855 lead to the law's repeal.

Now, Prohibition was being implemented on a national scale, and being enshrined in the Constitution no less. What followed was a litany of unintended consequences. This should have come as no surprise with a venture as experimental as Prohibition. It is no mistake that President Herbert Hoover's 1928 description of Prohibition as "a great social and economic experiment, noble in motive and far-reaching in purpose" entered the popular lexicon as "the noble experiment." It was unfortunate for the entire nation that the experiment failed as miserably as it did. The Atlanta Constitution Cover: "$100,000,000 For Government From Income Tax", Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Economics of Prohibition Prohibition's supporters were initially surprised by what did not come to pass during the dry era. When the law went into effect, they expected sales of clothing and household goods to skyrocket. Real estate developers and landlords expected rents to rise as saloons closed and neighborhoods improved. Chewing gum, grape juice, and soft drink companies all expected growth. Theater producers expected new crowds as Americans looked for new ways to entertain themselves without alcohol. None of it came to pass.

Instead, the unintended consequences proved to be a decline in amusement and entertainment industries across the board. Restaurants failed, as they could no longer make a profit without legal liquor sales. Theater revenues declined rather than increase, and few of the other economic benefits that had been predicted came to pass. On the whole, the initial economic effects of Prohibition were largely negative. The closing of breweries, distilleries and saloons led to the elimination of thousands of jobs, and in turn thousands more jobs were eliminated for barrel makers, truckers, waiters, and other related trades. The unintended economic consequences of Prohibition didn't stop there. One of the most profound effects of Prohibition was on government tax revenues. Before Prohibition, many states relied heavily on excise taxes in liquor sales to fund their budgets. In New York, almost 75% of the state's revenue was derived from liquor taxes. With Prohibition in effect, that revenue was immediately lost. At the national level, Prohibition cost the federal government a total of $11 billion in lost tax revenue, while costing over $300 million to enforce.

The most lasting consequence was that many states and the federal government would come to rely on income tax revenue to fund their budgets going forward. IRS Treasury official with confiscated still, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division "Cat and Mouse" Prohibition led to many more unintended consequences because of the cat and mouse nature of Prohibition enforcement. While the Eighteenth Amendment prohibited the manufacture, sale and transportation of intoxicating beverages, it did not outlaw the possession or consumption of alcohol in the United States. The Volstead Act, the federal law that provided for the enforcement of Prohibition, also left enough loopholes and quirks that it opened the door to myriad schemes to evade the dry mandate. One of the legal exceptions to the Prohibition law was that pharmacists were allowed to dispense whiskey by prescription for any number of ailments, ranging from anxiety to influenza. Bootleggers quickly discovered that running a pharmacy was a perfect front for their trade. As a result, the number of registered pharmacists in New York State tripled during the Prohibition era.

Because Americans were also allowed to obtain wine for religious purposes, enrollments rose at churches and synagogues, and cities saw a large increase in the number of self-professed rabbis who could obtain wine for their congregations. The law was unclear when it came to Americans making wine at home. With a wink and a nod, the American grape industry began selling kits of juice concentrate with warnings not to leave them sitting too long or else they could ferment and turn into wine. Home stills were technically illegal, but Americans found they could purchase them at many hardware stores, while instructions for distilling could be found in public libraries in pamphlets issued by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The law that was meant to stop Americans from drinking was instead turning many of them into experts on how to make it. The trade in unregulated alcohol had serious consequences for public health. As the trade in illegal alcohol became more lucrative, the quality of alcohol on the black market declined. On average, 1000 Americans died every year during the Prohibition from the effects of drinking tainted liquor.

A line of shamefaced bootleggers in a Detroit, Michigan police station, Photofest The Greatest Consequence The effects of Prohibition on law enforcement were also negative. The sums of money being exchanged during the dry era proved a corrupting influence in both the federal Bureau of Prohibition and at the state and local level. Police officers and Prohibition agents alike were frequently tempted by bribes or the lucrative opportunity to go into bootlegging themselves. Many stayed honest, but enough succumbed to the temptation that the stereotype of the corrupt Prohibition agent or local cop undermined public trust in law enforcement for the duration of the era. The growth of the illegal liquor trade under Prohibition made criminals of millions of Americans. As the decade progressed, court rooms and jails overflowed, and the legal system failed to keep up. Many defendants in prohibition cases waited over a year to be brought to trial. As the backlog of cases increased, the judicial system turned to the "plea bargain" to clear hundreds of cases at a time, making a it common practice in American jurisprudence for the first time. The greatest unintended consequence of Prohibition however, was the plainest to see.

For over a decade, the law that was meant to foster temperance instead fostered intemperance and excess. The solution the United States had devised to address the problem of alcohol abuse had instead made the problem even worse. The statistics of the period are notoriously unreliable, but it is very clear that in many parts of the United States more people were drinking, and people were drinking more. There is little doubt that Prohibition failed to achieve what it set out to do, and that its unintended consequences were far more far reaching than its few benefits. The ultimate lesson is two-fold. Watch out for solutions that end up worse than the problems they set out to solve, and remember that the Constitution is no place for experiments, noble or otherwise. By Michael Lerner, historian

Question: Which amendment to the Constitution mandated prohibition in the USA?
Answer: Eighteenth Amendment