The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation: Annotations of Cases Decided by the Supreme Court of the United States to June 30, 1952
History
The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation: Annotations of Cases Decided by the Supreme Court of the United States to June 30, 1952
Constitutional law -- United States; Constitutions -- United States
Long before this the immunity temporarily conferred by the original
package doctrine upon liquors had been extended to cigarettes[933] and,
with an instructive exception, to oleomargarine. The exception referred
to was made in Plumley _v._ Massachusetts,[934] where the Court held
that a statute of that State forbidding the sale of oleomargarine
colored to look like butter could validly be applied to oleomargarine
brought from another State and still in the original package. The
justification of the statute to the Court's mind was that it sought "to
suppress false pretenses and promote fair dealing in the sale of an
article of food." Nor did Leisy and Co. _v._ Hardin[935] apply, said
Justice Harlan for the Court, because the beer in that case was "genuine
beer, and not a liquid or drink colored artificially so as to cause it
to look like beer." That decision was never intended, he continued, to
hold that "a State is powerless to prevent the sale of articles
manufactured in or brought from another State, and subjects of traffic
and commerce, if their sale may cheat the people into purchasing
something they do not intend to buy * * *."[936] Obviously, the argument
was conclusive only on the assumption that a State has a better right to
prevent frauds than it has to prevent drunkenness and like evils; and
doubtless that is the way the Court felt about the matter at that date.
On the one hand, the liquor traffic was a very ancient, if not an
altogether, venerable institution, while oleomargarine was then a
relatively novel article of commerce whose wholesomeness was suspect. On
the other hand, laws designed to secure fair dealing and condemnatory of
fraud followed closely the track of the common law, while anti-liquor
laws most decidedly did not. The real differentiation of the two cases
had to be sought in historical grounds. Yet the State must not put
unreasonable burdens upon interstate commerce even in oleomargarine.
Thus a Pennsylvania statute forbidding the sale of this product even in
the unadulterated condition was pronounced invalid so far as it operated
to prevent the introduction of such oleomargarine from another State and
its sale in the original package;[937] as was also a New Hampshire
statute which required that all oleomargarine marketed in the State be
colored pink.[938] A little later in the case above mentioned involving
cigarettes, the Court discovered some of the difficulties of the
original package doctrine when applied to interstate commerce, in which
the package is not so apt to be standardized as it is in foreign
commerce.[939]
DEMISE OF THE ORIGINAL PACKAGE DOCTRINE
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