Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 147, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 June 1918 — DRY LAW HELD VALID [ARTICLE]

DRY LAW HELD VALID

SUPREME COURT UPHOLDS ACT OF LAST LEGISLATUREFOUR TO ONE. Indiana’s prohibition law, enacted by the Legislature of 1917 and effective since April 3, 1918, was unheld by the State Supreme Court yesterday. Four justices concurred in the decision, Justice John W. Spencer, of Evansville, dissented. The majority declared "the law a proper exercise of the state’s police power. Counsel for contesting breweries and saloon keepers intimated in tihe afternoon that a petition for rehearing may ibe filed, end, failing of that, the liquor interests may try to carry the case to the United States Supreme Court. The Rev. E. S. Shumaker, superintendent of the Anti-Saloon League of Indiana, expressed gratification over the outcome, but warned the people of the state that unless they are watchful the wet interests may elect a “wet” Legislature and overthrow the law.

Justice Howard L. Townsend wrote the opinion which was incurred in by Justice Lawson M. Harvey and Moses B. Lairy. Chief Justice David A. Myers concurred tin the Conclusion reached. “The case may be carried to the Supreme Court of the United States,” said Charles E. Cox, farmer justice. of the Supreme Court, who was one of the counsel for the defense, “on account of the Federal constitution points involved. There is ample'basis for Federal consideration in the provision of the United States constitution relating to impairment of contractual obligation by states.” The regulation of the lipuor traffic is clearly within the police power of the state no one denies, according to the opinion. It then reasons that when this is admitted there must follow the power to takg such steps as are reasonable suitable to carry out this purpose. The opinion said also that there is no difference in constitutional principle between the prohibition of the sale of intoxicating liquor as a beverage and the prohibition of the manufacture in order to stop the sale. As to the Beebe case, wherein the Supreme Court once held that there is no power under the state constitution to prohibit the manufacture of intoxicating liquor and so was largely used as an argument by the wets, the opinion held that it could not be determined on what principle the court acted at that time. It is pointed out that the question stood undecided for three years and then the law was pronounced void “without assigning any reasons as to whether it was considered void under the state or Federal constitution.” That law in some of its particulars would have been void that time under the Federal constitution, the opinion held, but the court points out that since that time Federal acts changing then existent conditions have been enacted. The opinion held, furthermore, that the early act may have been declared vodd because it provided that the state should have a monopoly in the traffic and then showed that since that time also public monopoly of intoxicants has been justified of the ground that the nature of the traffic warrants its entire prohibition. The rule of stare decisis, invoked by the wets in their presentation of the case, was held as of doubtful existence as a sound principle. It was held to have no application, once its existence is assumed, to police power because there can be no property rights which are not subject to police conrtol. The court concludes that the principle of stare decisis could not chain the court to an erroneous decision.