Twenty-First Amendment Research Articles

The Twenty-First Amendment and State Control over Intoxicating Liquor: Accommodating the Federal Interest

The Twenty-First Amendment and State Control over Intoxicating Liquor: Accommodating the Federal Interest

The National Minimum Drinking-Age Law

The National Minimum Drinking-Age Act of 1984 was hailed by some observers as a welcome and appropriate exercise of federal power. However, the act also constituted an invasion of states' rights. The act stipulates a minimum legal age of 21 for the purchase or public possession of any alcoholic beverage, and incorporates sanctions against states whose laws are not in compliance. This article evaluates the constitutional bases for federal intergovernmental regulation in a policy area dominated by states since the repeal of prohibition in 1933 by the TwentyFirst Amendment. It also considers the effectiveness of policies designed to prevent alcoholrelated highway deaths, and the relative merits of federal incentives or penalties to induce desired behavior by the states. The article concludes that the states, for which the Reagan administration 's early theme of decentralization was so promising, may continue to find both their federal funds and individual autonomy seriously compromised in the foreseeable future.

Repealing National Prohibition

In this new edition of the most comprehensive study of the political reaction against the Eighteenth Amendment, a response that led to its reversal fourteen years later by the Twenty-first Amendment, David E. Kyvig examines the operation of the national liquor ban, discusses central issues of U.S. constitutional development, and illuminates continuing public policy issues of alcohol and drug control. Employing previously unexamined archival evidence, Kyvig calls attention to a little-known but broad-based bipartisan movement led by the Associated Against the Prohibition Amendment and the Women's Organization for National Prohibition Reform. These organizations ad their allies amassed political power, particularly within the Democratic path. In the midst of the Great Depression they engineered a complicated, yet very democratic process of formal constitutional change, in the end achieving the only amendment reversal in U.S. constitutional history.

The Effect of the Twenty-First Amendment on State Authority to Control Intoxicating Liquors

The Effect of the Twenty-First Amendment on State Authority to Control Intoxicating Liquors

Convention Ratification of Federal Constitutional Amendments

The amending process of the Constitution of the United States, contained in Article V, consists of two stages: proposal and ratification. Each stage, in turn, offers two alternative procedures which can be interchanged to provide four means of effecting constitutional alteration. An amendment may be proposed either by Congress or by a national convention assembled upon proper application of the states; and an amendment may be ratified, as Congress decides, either by state legislatures or by state conventions. The latter mode of ratification strangely has been selected only for the Twenty-first Amendment; but despite its lack of use, this convention mode has had an interesting history which is here examined chronologically to explain why it has not been used more often.

Constitutional Law: Twenty-First Amendment, Import-Export Clause, and State Taxation of Imported Foreign Liquors

Constitutional Law: Twenty-First Amendment, Import-Export Clause, and State Taxation of Imported Foreign Liquors

Taxation of Liquor Imports: Effect of Youngstown and the Twenty-First Amendment: Constitutional Law. Exports and Imports. Intoxicating Liquors

Taxation of Liquor Imports: Effect of Youngstown and the Twenty-First Amendment: Constitutional Law. Exports and Imports. Intoxicating Liquors

Economic Localism in State Alcoholic Beverage Laws. Experience under the Twenty-First Amendment

Economic Localism in State Alcoholic Beverage Laws. Experience under the Twenty-First Amendment

The Twenty-First Amendment versus the Interstate Commerce Clause

The Twenty-First Amendment versus the Interstate Commerce Clause

Constitutional Law. Twenty-First Amendment. Regulation and Taxation of Shipments of Liquor out of a State

Constitutional Law. Twenty-First Amendment. Regulation and Taxation of Shipments of Liquor out of a State

Self-Regulation in the Brewing Industry

The American brewing industry as it exists today is a billion-dollar business less than eight years of age, recreated overnight by popular demand after thirteen years of Prohibition, governed by 50 different sets of laws and regulations and confronted by myriad problems dealing with its present and future.1 In any consideration of modern American brewing's part in the social and economic world today, it is essential that the effects of the years of Prohibition be assigned an important role. Beer was relegalized as a restoration of individual liberty and a source of revenue, to be sure. But when the Congress relegalized light beer on April 7, I933, and the necessary 36 states acted to repeal the Eighteenth Amendment eight months later, the thought uppermost in the minds of most Americans was that the abuses and disrespect for law which accompanied Prohibition would vanish once beer and liquor were sold as valid articles of trade.2 The responsibility for drawing the laws regulating beer and brewing fell to the state legislatures, and the thoughts that have been mentioned dominated the philosphy of the state laws as they were enacted. By and large, an excellent job was doneconsidering that no adequate changeover from Prohibition to legalization had been worked out, that haste was apparently of the essence, and that the public had had no transition period in which to divest itself of peculiar habits acquired during the life of the Eighteenth Amendment. Legality, in other words, was deemed sufficient protection for the industry and the public as well. The fact that light beer was permitted to be sold for eight months before the Twenty-first Amendment became effective may have seemed at the time to provide a sufficient time of transition; there was no provision, however, to deal with the psychological reactions of a nation to which, for the first time in thirteen years, certain personal liberties which had never been abandoned had been officially restored.

Protection of Dry Areas

So much public attention has been given the legalization of alcoholic beverages in the United States many persons fail to realize that one sixth of the nation still lives in territory which is legally and that only 15 states are entirely wet.' More than academic interest attaches, therefore, to the problems involved in the protection of dry areas in the other 33 states. Enforcement of sumptuary legislation has long been recognized as one of the most difficult tasks of government, so it was scarcely to be expected that the states could create a complete solution to the problems involved in regulating the sale and consumption of intoxicating beverages immediately following adoption of the Twenty-first Amendment. Not the least among the legal and administrative difficulties which arose were those involving dry areas. In many instances the problems which had marked the national prohibition period were intensified by the fact that large supplies of legal liquor became available within a few miles of most dry sections of the country. Consideration of the efforts made to protect dry localities demands recognition that there are two distinct types of such areas-the prohibition states of Kansas, Mississippi and Oklahoma, and the thousands of cities, towns, counties, and precincts which are dry by local option.2 'Kansas, Oklahoma, and Mississippi, with an aggregate population of six and a quarter million persons and an area of nearly 200,000 square miles, are veritable islands in a sea of liquor.3 Despite their common boundary, Kansas is still bordered

Alcoholic Beverage Control before Repeal

The adoption of the Twenty-first Amendment on December 5, I933 terminated the experiment in national prohibition and established a new liquor control policy within the framework of which federal and state governments were to regulate the manufacture, distribution, and sale of intoxicating beverages. Post-Repeal liquor control legislation followed no uniform pattern; the states utilized the control systems of prohibition, state monopoly, and licensing, while the Federal Government established the Federal Alcohol Administration to regulate phases of the liquor traffic that could not be controlled effectively by the states. Legislators seeking to incorporate intc those systems the most effective control devices and to avoid the errors of the past looked to the rich history of previous legislative attempts to cope with the liquor problem. The purpose of this paper will be to sketch the salient features of preRepeal control systems and to suggest briefly the meaningful lessons that may be learned from the history of American liquor control before Repeal.

Ratification of the Twenty-First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.Everett S. Brown

<i>Ratification of the Twenty-First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.</i>Everett S. Brown

Constitutional Law: Twenty-First Amendment: Validity of State Statute Discriminating against Liquor Imports

Constitutional Law: Twenty-First Amendment: Validity of State Statute Discriminating against Liquor Imports

Constitutional Law: Effect of the Twenty-First Amendment on Equal Protection of Liquor Importers

Constitutional Law: Effect of the Twenty-First Amendment on Equal Protection of Liquor Importers

Constitutional Law: Twenty-First Amendment and Its Effect on the Commerce Clause and Equal Protection Clause as Applied to Liquor

Constitutional Law: Twenty-First Amendment and Its Effect on the Commerce Clause and Equal Protection Clause as Applied to Liquor

Constitutional Law. Twenty-First Amendment. Validity of State Law Imposing Discriminatory Taxation on Importation of Liquor into the State

Constitutional Law. Twenty-First Amendment. Validity of State Law Imposing Discriminatory Taxation on Importation of Liquor into the State

Constitutional Law. State Tax on Importers of Beer under Twenty-First Amendment

Constitutional Law. State Tax on Importers of Beer under Twenty-First Amendment

Constitutional Law. Legislative Powers: Taxation. Validity under Twenty-First Amendment of State Tax on Liquor Imported from Other States

Constitutional Law. Legislative Powers: Taxation. Validity under Twenty-First Amendment of State Tax on Liquor Imported from Other States