Eighteenth Amendment--Prohibition of Intoxicating Liquors

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                   PROHIBITION OF INTOXICATING LIQUORS

                               __________

                          EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT


  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.
      Validity of Adoption

        Cases relating to this question are presented and discussed
under Article V.

      Enforcement

        Cases produced by enforcement and arising under the Fourth and
Fifth Amendments 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        This Amendment was repealed by the Twenty-first Amendment, and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specifically repealed by the act of August 27, 1935,\2\ federal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repealed as follows: District of Columbia--April 5, 1933, and

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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\

        \1\Ch. 85, 41 Stat. 305.
        \2\Ch. 740, 49 Stat. 872.
        \3\Ch. 19, 48 Stat. 25; ch. 4, 48 Stat. 319.
        \4\Ch. 37, 48 Stat. 361.
        \5\Ch. 88, 48 Stat. 467.
        \6\Ch. 657, 48 Stat. 1116.
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        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

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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\

        \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.
        \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).
        \9\United States v. Mack, 295 U.S. 480 (1935).