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1 1 (June 26, 2023)

handle is hein.crs/govemav0001 and id is 1 raw text is: L a Congressional_______ 'Research Service The Eighteenth Amendment and National Prohibition, Part 5: Proposal and Ratification June 26, 2023 This Legal Sidebar post is the fifth 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. Proposal and Ratification of the Eighteenth Amendment By 1917, the widespread proliferation of state restrictions on the liquor trade and Congress's enactment of wartime prohibition measures had laid the foundation for nationwide Prohibition. The states' ratification of the Sixteenth Amendment in 1913 boosted the Eighteenth Amendment's prospects by empowering Congress to impose a nationwide income tax to offset the loss of federal alcohol excise tax revenue. With the Anti-Saloon League's political influence at its peak, a wave of dry candidates swept into Congress in 1916. Although earlier nationwide prohibition efforts had failed to gain enough political support, advocates recognized that the political environment was favorable for Congress's proposal of the Eighteenth Amendment. On April 4, 1917, Senator Morris Sheppard of Texas introduced the joint resolution that would, as revised, become the Eighteenth Amendment. The Senate Judiciary Committee, to which the joint resolution was referred, reported it favorably. The committee's report, relying on statements from prior Congresses, contended that the amendment should be submitted to the states because of popular support for Prohibition, the evils of alcoholic beverages, and the presumption that Congress lacked constitutional authority to regulate the intrastate manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages comprehensively in peacetime. (In the decades leading up to the Eighteenth Amendment's proposal and Congressional Research Service https://crsreports.congress.gov LSB10989 CRS Legal Sidebar Prepared for Members and Committees of Congress

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