Democratic Sentinel, Volume 14, Number 17, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 May 1890 — LIQUOR LAWS INVALID. [ARTICLE]

LIQUOR LAWS INVALID.

THE lOWA AND MICHIGAN ACTS DECLARED VOID. The Supreme Court of the United States Decides that Intoxicants May Be Imposed, and that They Are Not Liable to Unusual Taxes. [Washington special.} The United States bupreme Court on Monday tendered an opiniou adverse to the constitutionality ot State laws in prohibition States providing for the seizure of liquor brought from other States. Such laws, it is held, are interferences ■with interstate commerce. The case in which the decision was made was that of Lei ay against Hardin, brought here on an appeal from the Supreme Court of lowa. Leisy, a beer manufacturer of Peoria, shipped beer to Keokuk, which waß seized in the original p&(kages by Hardin, a State official, as having been at nt tin re in violation of the lowa iaw. The Supreme Court of lowa held ibat the law under which this official acted was valid, but the Federal Bupreme Court to-day reversed that decision. Justices Gray. Harlan, aDd Brewer dissented from the opinion of the majority of the court. The opinion cited a liumtor of cases btaribg upon interstate commerce; among others "the license cases” laws pnsEed by Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Khcde Island in reference to the sale of spirit-. ujus liquors, came under review in the court and were sustained, although the members of the corn t who participated in the decisions did not concur in any common ground upon which torebt them, in which Chief Justice Taney is quoted as holding that spirits and distilled liquors are universally admitted to bo subjects of ownership and property and therefore subjicts of exchange, barter and traffic, like any other commodity in which a right of property exists; that Congress, under its general power to regulate commerce with foriign nations, may inrescribe what merchandise shall be admitted and what excluded. But inasmuch as the law of Congress authorized the importation of ardent spirits, no State has a rigut to prohibit their introduction. After referring to these and other decisions bearing on State license laws, the Court in its opinion to-day says: • These decisions rest upon the undoubted right of the btates of the Union to control their purely •internal affairs, in doing which they exercise powers not surrendered to the National Government; but whenever the law of the sta.e amounts essentially to a regulation of commerce with foreign nations or among the States, as it does when it inhibits, directly or indirectly, the receipt of an imported commodity or its disposition before it nas ceased to become an article of trade beta een one State aud another, or another country aad this, it comes in conflict with a power which, in this particular, has been exclusively vested iu the General Government and is tbeiefore void. “The plaintiffs, citizens of Illinois, had the right to import their H heer into lowa, aud had the right to sell it, by which act alone it became mingled in the common mass of property within tlie btate. Up to that point of time, in the aoseuce of Congressional permission to do so, the btate had no power to interiere by stizure, or auy other action, in prohibition of importation and sale by. the non-resident importer. “Articles which Congress recognizes as subjects of interstate commerce may be controlled by state laws amounting to regulations, while they retain that character ; but to concede io a Stale the power to exclude such articles without Congressional permission is to concede to a majority of the people of a Stale represented in the btate Legislature the power to regulate commercial intercourse between the btates.” .lusiices Gray. Harlan, and Brewer, iu summing up thp reasons which satisfy thorn that the judgment of the Bupreme Court of lowa snould be affirmed, say : “The power of regulating or prohibiting the manufacture and sale of intoxicating liquors belongs, us a branch of the police power, to the Legislatures of the several btates, and can be judiciously and effectively exercisjd by them alone according to their views of puulic j oiicy and local needs, and cannot practically, if it can consutuitonally, be wielded by Congress as part of a rational and uniform system. ■The lowa piohibitory laws were enacted by the Legislature in the exercise of its undoubted power to piOuect iis inhabitants ugainst the evils, physical, moral and social, attending the free use of intoxicating liquors. They are not aimed at interstate commerce, and have no relation to the movement of goeds lrcm one btate to another, but operate cnly ou intoxicating liquois wiiLiu the limits o. tne Btate. They include all such liquccs without discrimination', and do not even mention where they are made or whence they come. They affect commerce much more remotely than laws o;a btate—tho validity of which is unquestioned —authorizing the construction of bridges and damsacioßß navigable waters within its limits, which wholly obstruct the course of commerce and navigation, or than quarantine laws, which operate diiectlyupon all ships aud merchandise coming into the ports of the State. If the. statutes of a btate restricting or prohibiting the sale of intoxicating liquors within its territory are to be held inopera ive and void as applied to liquors sent or brought from another Slate and sold by the importeis iu original packages, the consequence must be that un inbabiLaut of any Btate may, under the pretext of interstate commerce, ,ttnd without license or supervision of any public authority, carry or send liquor into and sell in any or all of the other Btates, despite.aay legislation of those BtatAjafc'the subject, and although his own StabWSwftuld be the only one v. bich had not enacted similar laws.” Nothing short of affirmative and explicit legislation on the part of Congress will convince the dissenting justices that it ctntemplated or intended such a result. They quote from the decision in the license cases in which the court sustained these views, and contend that tho silence and inaction of Congress upon the subject during ihs long period since the license cases appear to require the inference that Congress intended ihat the law should remain as thereby declared by the court, rather than to warrant the presumption that uo, gress intended that commerce among ihs States should free from theindirect effect Oi such an exercise of the police power lor public safety, as was adjudged by that decision to be within the constitutional authority of the Btate.

The court )also decided the case of Henry Lyng against the people of the State of Michigan, involving the validity of the Michigan law taxing beer iu the o.iginal package -manufactured in Wisconsin and sold in Michigan. The court denies the } o«er of a State to exclude directly or indirectly the subject? or " interstate commeice by the imposition of burdens thereon, or to regulate such commerce without toagressioual permission. 'the seme rule.it is held, which applies to the sugar i-f Louis.ana, the cotton of t-outh Carolina, the wines of la i omia, and the lobacco of Maryland and Cm.neoticut applies to alt commouiiies in wbich a right of traffic exists, is recognized by the laws of Congress, the decisions of courts ana the usages of the commercial world, and should apply in this case. Tito decision of the State Court of Michigan, deciding that Lyng was liable to tax, is in. ihiv. cake also reversed. Justices Gray, Harlan and Brewer dissented from the opinion of the court on the same grounds stated in the Lei By-Hardin case. 42+ .