Constitutional history -- United States; United States -- Politics and government; United States. Constitution. 18th Amendment
And so we find the Court merely stating “that we reach and announce the
following conclusions _on the questions involved_.” Nothing could make
more clear that no conclusion is reached or announced on any question
not presented by those who urged invalidity.
The first four conclusions reached and announced are conclusions of
law against the opposite legal conclusions urged by those opponents.
The fifth conclusion is a conclusion of fact that validity of the
Amendment is not affected by any of the four propositions advanced by
the opponents of the Amendment. In other words, the first five numbered
conclusions, all that deal with validity of the Amendment, can be
expressed in our own words, viz: “Although the proposing Resolution
did not _state_ that Congress deemed the proposal necessary, although
only two thirds of a quorum in each House (and not two thirds of the
membership of each House) made the proposal, although the citizens
of each referendum state have not acted as part of their respective
state legislatures, and although it is urged that the Fifth Article
_reserved_ abilities do not include ability to make an Amendment like
the Eighteenth, we decide that none of _these_ things affect the
validity of the new Article.”
And, when we make this accurate statement of what was decided in those
National Prohibition Cases, we average Americans, fresh from our
education with the Americans who found themselves “subjects” and made
themselves and their posterity free men, have some startling facts
brought home to us.
Undoubtedly thousands of lawyers had worked, for more than a year, in
the preparation of the arguments that were made and the briefs that
were filed. When these amazingly important litigations were reached,
the arguments lasted for several days. On the exhaustive briefs filed
against validity, there appear twenty-two lawyers, many of them among
the leaders of the American Bar. On the briefs to support state
government omnipotence over the citizens of America, “in all matters
whatsoever,” thirty-five lawyers, headed by a former member of the
Supreme Court, appear.
We know, with a knowledge that brooks no denial, because it is a
knowledge brought from our experience with those who made themselves
free men and established the Constitution to secure that result to
themselves and to us, that the new Article is not in the Constitution
unless at some time prior to 1917, the free men of America, all the
individual citizens of America, became the “subjects” of _some_ state
governments.
It is clear, therefore, that the existence of the Eighteenth Amendment
has always depended upon the correct answer to the question whether the
American is “Citizen or Subject?”
If we are subjects, the new Article _may_ be in the Constitution not
made by us but made by governments.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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