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1 1 (June 26, 2023)

handle is hein.crs/govemaz0001 and id is 1 raw text is: $ ~ Congressional 'aResearch Service The Eighteenth Amendment and National Prohibition, Part 1: Introduction June 26, 2023 This Legal Sidebar post is the first 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. Historical Background Prior to its repeal, the Eighteenth Amendment prohibited the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors for beverage purposes within the United States. To enforce Prohibition, Congress enacted the National Prohibition Act or Volstead Act. 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. Difficult to enforce and widely disobeyed, Prohibition lasted almost 14 years before the Twenty-First Amendment repealed it. The Eighteenth Amendment was the product of nationwide temperance movements that first emerged in the decades after the Founding and steadily grew in influence during the Progressive Era. From the Colonial Era to the early 1800s, many Americans viewed moderate alcohol consumption as a normal aspect of life. Early Americans, including many of the Founders, drank, purchased, or manufactured large quantities of alcoholic beverages. However, as Americans' consumption of hard liquor increased significantly from the 1790s to the 1830s, Protestant Christians, concerned about alcoholism's effects on society, formed some of the first temperance groups. Congressional Research Service https://crsreports.congress.gov LSB10985 CRS Legal Sidebar Prepared for Members and Committees of Congress

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