Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 70, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 April 1918 — BRIEF FILED ATTACKING STATE PROHIBITION LAW. [ARTICLE]

BRIEF FILED ATTACKING STATE PROHIBITION LAW.

Indianapolis, March 31.—Twelve propositions are set ftyth in a brief filed yesterday afternoon in the Indiana supreme court in behalf of the F. W. Cook Brewing company, of Evansville, in an attempt to show that the prohibition law enacte.d by the 1917 legislature is unconstitutional. The principal assertion is that the constitution gives the legislature no power to enact a prohibitory law. The brief recites that in the constitutional convention of 1850 efforts were made to include in the document absolute prohibition, “but the proceedings of that convention disclose a determination to continue the eMating public policy of regulation and restriction, and none of the prohibition proposals were incorporated in the new constitution." It also is submitted that at various times efforts were made in the legislature' to submit an amendment to the constitution to proh'lit the manufacture I 'or sale of liquor or to authorize the legislature to enact prohibition laws. This is cited in an attempt to show that it is a settled principle that the legislate is without authority to enact a • dry” law Along this same line the bt*>f cites the overthrow by the supreme court about sixty-four years ago of the prohibition law of 1855 on the ground that the constitution, which is still in force, did not empower the legislature so to act. It is argued that the 1917 law is “ambiguous, inconsistent, obscure and contradictory” and is incapable of interpretation and enforcement. It is also submitted that it discriminates against manufacturers of beer in that it permits the owners of warehouse receipts covering all kinds’ of intoxicating liquors in a bounded warehouse to hold and sell such liquor in the due course of trade, while manufacturers of beer must dispose of their stock within ten days after April 2. George H. Batchelor of Indianapolis has filed an amicus curiae brief in the supreme court, arguing that the legislature under the police power had the right to enact the law. He attacks the opinion of Judge Perkins in the Beebe and Herman cases, which upset the “dry” law of 1855.