UNITED STATES v. HILL
No. 357
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
January 13, 1919
248 U.S. 420
ERROR TO THE DISTRICT COURT OF THE UNITED STATES FOR THE SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF WEST VIRGINIA. Argued November 5, 6, 1918.
The United States has that power and the Courts may exercise their portion of it unless prohibited in some constitutional way.
If the passage quoted from the answer is sufficient to open the contention that treaties had contracted for the establishment of a boundary commission with exclusive jurisdiction and so had prohibited the Courts from dealing with the question, neither the validity nor the construction of any treaty was drawn in question; or if an attenuated question can be discovered it is no more than formal. A commission sat under the last of the treaties and its action was rejected by the Government as abortive. As thе Government had withdrawn its suggestion of comity so far as the present case is concerned, there was no reason why the Court should not proceed to trial, and there is no reason why the present writ should not be dismissed as it was in Warder v. Loomis, 197 U.S. 619, and in Warder v. Cotton, 207 U.S. 582. It follows that some other questions argued cannot be discussed.
Writ of error dismissed.
The transportation оf liquor upon the person, and for the personal use, of an interstate passenger, is “interstate commerce.” P. 424.
Under the power to regulate interstate commerce, Congress may forbid the interstate transportation of intoxicating liquor without regard to the policy or law of any State. P. 425.
The “Reed Amendment,”
Reversed.
THE case is stated in the opinion.
Mr. Assistant Attorney General Frierson, with whom Mr. Charles S. Coffey was on the brief, for the United States.
No appearance for defendant in error.
MR. JUSTICE DAY delivered the opinion of the court.
This is a writ of error bringing in review under the Criminal Appeals Act the judgment of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of West Virginia sustaining a demurrer and motion to quash an indictment against one Dan Hill. The indictment charged that Hill on the 20th of November, 1917, being in the State of Kentucky, there intended to go and be carried by means of a common carrier, engaged in interstate commerce, from the State of Kentucky into the State of West Virginia, and intended to carry upon his person, as a beverage, for his personal use, a quantity of intoxicating liquor, to-wit: one quart thereof, into the State of West
The Reed Amendment is a part of
“. . . Whoever shall order, purchase, or cause intoxicating liquors to be transported in interstate commerce, exceрt for scientific, sacramental, medicinal, and mechanical purposes, into any State or Territory the laws of which State or Territory prohibit the manufacture or sale therein of intoxicating liquors for beverage purposes shall be punished as aforesaid: Provided, That nothing herein shall authorize the shipmеnt of liquor into any State contrary to the laws of such State. . . .”
The ground of decision, as appears by the opinion of the District Court, was that the phrase: “transported in interstate commerce,” as used in the act, was intended to mean and apply only to liquor transported for commercial purposes. This conclusion was reached from a
The Constitution confers upon Congress the power to regulate commerce among the States. From an early day such commerce has been held to include the transportation of persons and property no less than the purchase, sale and exсhange of commodities. Gibbons v. Ogden, 9 Wheat. 1, 188; Gloucester Ferry Co. v. Pennsylvania, 114 U.S. 196, 203. “Importation into one State from another
Congress in the passage of the Reed Amendment must be presumed to have had, and in our opinion undoubtedly did have, in mind this well-known and often declared meaning of interstate commerce. It had already provided in the Wilson Act for state control over liquor after its delivery to the consignee in interstate commerce. In the Webb-Kenyon Act it had prohibited the shipment of liquor in interstate commerce where the same was to be used in violation of the law of the State into which it was transported. In the passage of the Reed Amendment it was intended to take another step in legislation under the authority of the commerce clause. The meaning of the act must be found in the language in which it is expressed, when, as here, there is no ambiguity in the terms of the law. The order, purchase, or transportation in interstate commerce, save for certain excepted purposes, is forbidden. The exceptions are specific and are those for scientific, sacramental, medicinal, or mechanical purposes; and in the proviso it is set forth that nothing contained in the act shall authorize interstate commerce shipments into a State contrary to its laws.
West Virginia is a State in which the manufacture and sale of intoxicating liquors for beverage purposes is prohibited. If the act is within the constitutional authority of Congress, it follows that the indictment charged an offense within the terms of the law. That Congress posses-
The power of Congress, it is true, is to regulate commerce, which is ordinarily accomplished by prescribing rules for its conduct. That regulation may take the character of рrohibition, in proper cases, is well established by the decisions of this court. Lottery Case, supra; Hipolite Egg Co. v. United States, 220 U.S. 45; Hoke v. United States, 227 U.S. 308; Caminetti v. United States, 242 U.S. 470; Clark Distilling Co. v. Western Maryland Ry. Co., 242 U.S. 311; Hammer v. Dagenhart, 247 U.S. 251, 270, 271.
“. . . we can see no reason for saying that although Congress in view of the nature and character of intoxicants had a power to forbid their movement in interstate commerce, it had not the authority to so deal with the subject as to establish a regulation (which is what was done by the Webb-Kenyon Law) making it impossible for one State to violate the prohibitions of the laws of another through the channels of interstate commerce. Indeed, we can see no escape from the conclusion that if we accepted the proposition urged, we would be obliged to announce the contradiction in terms that because Congress had exerted a regulation lesser in power than it wаs authorized to exert, therefore its action was void for excess of power. Or, in other words, stating the necessary result of the argument from a concrete consideration of the particular subject here involved, that because Congress in adopting a regulation had considered the nature and character of our dual system of government, State and Nation, and instead of absolutely prohibiting, had so conformed its regulation as to produce coöperation be-
tween the local and national forces of government to the end of preserving the rights of all, it had thereby transcended the complete and perfect power of regulation conferred by the Constitution.”
In view of the authority of Congress over the subject-matter, and the enactment of previous legislation embodied in the Wilson and Webb-Kenyon Laws, we have no question that Congress enacted this statute because of its beliеf that in States prohibiting the sale and manufacture of intoxicating liquors for beverage purposes the facilities of interstate commerce should be denied to the introduction of intoxicants by means of interstate commerce, except for the limited purposes permitted in the statute which have nothing to do with liquor when used as a beverage. That the State saw fit to permit the introduction of liquor for personal use in limited quantity in nowise interferes with the authority of Congress, acting under its plenary power over interstate commerce, to make the prohibition against interstate shipment contained in this act. It may exert its authority, as in the Wilson and Webb-Kenyon Acts, having in view the laws of the State, but it has a power of its own, which in this instance it has exerted in accordance with its view of public policy.
When Congress exerts its authority in a matter within its control, state laws must give way in view of the regulation of the subject-matter by the superior power conferred by the Constitution. Seaboard Air Line Ry. v. Horton, 233 U.S. 492; St. Louis, Iron Mountain & Southern Ry. Co. v. Hesterly, 228 U.S. 702; St. Louis, San Francisco & Texas Ry. Co. v. Seale, 229 U.S. 156; Minnesota Rate Cases, 230 U.S. 352.
It follows that the District Court erred in sustaining the demurrer and motion to quash, and its judgment is
Reversed.
When Hill carried liquor from Kentucky into West Virginia for his personal use he did only what the latter State permitted. Construed as forbidding this action because West Virginia had undertaken to forbid manufacture and sale of intoxicants, the Reed Amendment in no proper sense regulates interstate commerce, but is a direct intermeddling with the State‘s internal affairs. Whether regarded as reward or punishment for wisdom or folly in enacting limited prohibition, the amendment so construed, I think, goes beyond federal power; and to hold otherwisе opens possibilities for partial and sectional legislation which may destroy proper control of their own affairs by the several States.
If Congress may deny liquor to those who live in a State simply because its manufacture is not permitted there, why may not this be done for any suggested reason, e. g., becausе the roads are bad or men are hanged for murder or coals are dug. Where is the limit?
The Webb-Kenyon Law, upheld in Clark Distilling Co. v. Western Md. Ry. Co., 242 U.S. 311, is wholly different from the act here involved. It suspends as to intoxicants moving in interstate commerce the rule of freedom from control by state action which the courts infer from congressional silence or failure spеcifically to regulate. “The absence of any law of Congress on the subject is equivalent to its declaration that commerce in that matter shall be free.” Bowman v. Chicago & Northwestern Ry. Co., 125 U.S. 465, 508; Leisy v. Hardin, 135 U.S. 100, 119. In plain terms, it permits state statutes to operate and thereby negatives any inference drawn from silence. The Reed Amendment as now construed is a congressional fiat imposing more complete prohibition wherever the State has assumed to prevent manufacture or sale of intoxicants.
MR. JUSTICE CLARKE concurs in this dissent.