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.
Prohibition took effect throughout the United States on January 17, 1920, which was one year after the states ratified the Eighteenth Amendment.1 Beginning with the consolidated National Prohibition Cases in 1920, the Supreme Court outlined the Eighteenth Amendment’s scope and the federal and state governments’ “concurrent” powers to enforce it.2 The Court also confronted questions about whether the circumstances of the Eighteenth Amendment’s proposal and ratification violated the requirements of Article V of the Constitution.3 The Court rejected these Article V challenges, determining that the Amendment had “become a part of the Constitution” and was to “be respected and given effect the same as other provisions of that instrument.” 4
-
Footnotes
- 1
- See Intro.3.5 Early Twentieth Century Amendments (Sixteenth Through Twenty-Second Amendments). See also Druggan v. Anderson, 269 U.S. 36, 38–39 (1925) (determining that Congress possessed the power to enact the Volstead Act after the states had ratified the Eighteenth Amendment, even though the Amendment had not yet become effective). To enforce Prohibition nationwide and regulate beverage and non-beverage uses of alcohol, Congress enacted the Volstead Act. See Amdt18.5 Volstead Act.
- 2
- See generally Nat’l Prohibition Cases, 253 U.S. 350, 386–87 (1920).
- 3
- E.g., id. at 386. For more on Article V’s process for amending the Constitution, see Article V: Amending the Constitution.
- 4
- Nat’l Prohibition Cases, 253 U.S. at 386. See also United States v. Sprague, 282 U.S. 716, 729–30 (1931) (holding that Congress could choose to have state legislatures, rather than state ratifying conventions, approve an amendment conferring new powers on Congress to abridge individual rights by enacting laws to enforce Prohibition because the “choice . . . of the mode of ratification, lies in the sole discretion of Congress.” ); Dillon v. Gloss, 256 U.S. 368, 375–76 (1921) (upholding Congress’s specification of a seven-year deadline for the Eighteenth Amendment’s ratification because the Constitution implicitly authorized Congress to fix a reasonable and definite period for ratification); Nat’l Prohibition Cases, 253 U.S. at 386 (holding that (1) Congress alone would judge whether an amendment was “necessary” under Article V; (2) a two-thirds vote of the Members present in each house, rather than two-thirds of all Members present or absent, was sufficient to propose a constitutional amendment, assuming the presence of a quorum; (3) the “referendum provisions of state constitutions and statutes cannot be applied, consistently with the Constitution . . . in the ratification or rejection of amendments to it” ; and (4) that the Eighteenth Amendment’s prohibition on the manufacture, sale, transport, import, and export of intoxicating liquors for beverage purposes was “within the power to amend reserved by Article 5 of the Constitution” ); Hawke v. Smith, 253 U.S. 221, 231 (1920) (holding that a state lacked the power to require submission of the state’s ratification of the Eighteenth Amendment to a popular referendum).