141 Iowa 172 | Iowa | 1909
The acts which defendant was enjoined from committing or continuing were acts in violation of the provision of Code, section 2382, as amended by Acts 28th General Assembly, chapter 74 (Code Supp. 1907, section 2382), prohibiting any person from soliciting, taking, or accepting “any order for the purchase, sale, shipment or delivery of any [intoxicating] liquors”; and the sole question presented is as to the constitutionality of the statutory provision as applied to one who solicits orders for intoxicating liquors as the agent of a resident of another State, which orders are to be submitted to the principal in such other state and filled, if accepted, by shipment of the liquor ordered directly from such other State to the purchaser in this State. In the case of State v. Hanaphy, 117 Iowa, 15 (followed in State v. Bernstein, 129 Iowa, 520) it was held that this statutory provision was unconstitutional, on the ground that it was an unwarranted restraint upon freedom of interstate commerce, and therefore in violation of article 1, section 8, of the Constitution of the United States. It is conceded that, unless the eases above cited are to be overruled, the demurrer in this case should have been sustained; but the contention for appellee is that in the recent ease of Dela
I. The statute of South Dakota which was under consideration by the Supreme Court of the United States in its recent decision provided for the punishment, as a misdemeanor, of the act of carrying on “the business of selling or offering for sale” intoxicating liquors within the state, “by any traveling salesman who solicits orders by the jug or bottle in lots less than five gallons,” without paying an annual license charge imposed by the statute; and it is argued that a decision sustaining this statute is
II. We are of course not bound to follow the views of the Supreme Court of the United States in passing upon the validity of our statutes further than that we recognize our obligation not to enforce a statute which is in violation of the Constitution of the United States. We are not bound, therefore, by any obligation imposed upon us in the federal Constitution to uphold a State statute merely because, in the view of the Supreme Court of the United States, it is not unconstitutional. But on the other hand, when we have held a State statute to be unconstitutional because in supposed conflict with the Constitution of the United States, and the Supreme Court of the United States has so interpreted the federal Constitution that the supposed conflict is found not to exist, there is no good reason why we should not change our rulings so as to sustain the policy of the statutes of the State. We may, as we sometimes have done, reach the conclusion that our previous decisions are wrong, and should be overruled; and, when we find that the previous decisions are not in conformity with the law (no property rights having been acquired in reliance on such previous decisions), we feel it to be our duty to overrule them, and to announce slich rule as we think should have been announced in the previous cases. Here there is no property right involved, for the lower court simply enjoined the defendant from pursuing the occupation of soliciting a particular kind of orders for the purchase of a particular class of property. The defendant was charged with carrying on the prohibited business at his residence, and nothing was in fact affected by the decree save the prevention of the soliciting or taking of such orders. It is plain, therefore, that defendant had ac
The argument that our statute became invalid by reason of our prior decision, and can not now be enforced without re-enactment, is entirely without weight. It is true that an unconstitutional statute is, so far as it is unconstitutional, without force from the time of its enactment, but the decisions of the court holding it to-be unconstitutional may be overruled, and the supposed unconstitutionality may thus be found not to exist. There is nothing to prevent a court from overruling its own decisions and rendering them of no force and effect as precedents in other cases. That a statute which has been held unconstitutional, either in toto or as applied to a particular class of cases, is valid and enforceable after the supposed constitutional objection has been removed, or in cases in which the objection is not applicable, is well settled. In re Rahrer, 140 U. S. 545 (11 Sup. Ct. 865, 35 L. Ed. 572); Blair v. Ostrander, 109 Iowa, 204; Allison v. Corker, 67 N. J. Law, 596 (52 Atl. 362, 60 L. R. A. 564).
We reach the conclusion that, in view of the final expression of view on the subject given by the Supreme Court of the United States, as above indicated, the cases of State v. Hanaphy and State v. Bernstein, so far as they are predicated upon the unconstitutionality of the statute in question as in conflict with the interstate commerce clause of the federal Constitution, should now be overruled, and the judgment of the trial court is therefore affirmed.