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1 1 (June 26, 2023)

handle is hein.crs/govemat0001 and id is 1 raw text is: Congressional_______ SaResearch Service The Eighteenth Amendment and National Prohibition, Part 7: Repeal June 26, 2023 This Legal Sidebar post is the last in a seven-part series that discusses the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution. Prior to its repeal, the Eighteenth Amendment prohibited the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors for beverage purposes within the United States. Section 2 of the Amendment granted Congress and the state legislatures concurrent power to enforce nationwide Prohibition by enacting appropriate legislation. The Eighteenth Amendment was partly a response to the Supreme Court's pre-Prohibition Era Commerce Clause jurisprudence, which limited the federal and state governments' power over the liquor traffic. As such, the Eighteenth Amendment's history provides insight into the judicial evolution of the Commerce Clause, which operates as both a positive grant of legislative power to Congress and a limit on state authority to regulate commerce. Additional information on this topic will be published in the Constitution Annotated: Analysis and Interpretation of the U.S. Constitution. Repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment The Eighteenth Amendment and Volstead Act were controversial in part because they empowered the federal government to police activities that implicated individual social habits and morality-a role traditionally led by state and local governments. Nationwide Prohibition quickly fell out of favor with the American public because of ineffective enforcement, harsh enforcement techniques, crime related to the illegal liquor traffic, a need for tax revenue during the Great Depression, and widespread defiance of the law. The Eighteenth Amendment was repealed when the states ratified the Twenty-First Amendment on December 5, 1933. The Supreme Court decided a few cases that examined the repeal's legal implications. In United States v. Chambers, the Court held that the Twenty-First Amendment's ratification immediately rendered the Eighteenth Amendment inoperative. Consequently, neither the Congress nor the courts could give it continued vitality. The Twenty-First Amendment also nullified provisions of the Volstead Act that rested upon Congress's Eighteenth Amendment powers, including provisions that imposed penal sanctions for violations of Prohibition. Courts were thus required to dismiss for lack of jurisdiction all pending prosecutions for Volstead Act violations, including proceedings on appeal. Congressional Research Service https://crsreports.congress.gov LSB10991 CRS Legal Sidebar Prepared for Members and Committees of Congress

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