Kidd v. Pearson

128 U.S. 1

Case Year: 1888

Case Ruling: 9-0, Affirmed

Opinion Justice: Lamar

FACTS

At issue in this case was an Iowa statute that declared distilleries to be a public nuisance and prohibited the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages. An exception was made for alcohol produced for mechanical, medicinal, culinary, or sacramental purposes if the distiller received permission from the board of supervisors in the county in which the manufacturing took place. The state law also allowed alcohol produced outside the state to enter Iowa in its original package when intended for subsequent sale out of state. A case was brought against John S. Kidd in 1885 for violating the act. Kidd admitted that he was manufacturing alcoholic beverages but argued that he was not subject to the state law because he produced alcohol only for out-of-state sale. The trial court found Kidd’s distillery to be a public nuisance under the law, and enjoined him from any further production of alcoholic beverages. The Iowa Supreme Court affirmed.

MR. JUSTICE LAMAR DELIVERED THE OPINION OF THE COURT.

... The questions ... for this court to determine are: (1) Does the statute as thus construed conflict with section 8, article 1, of the constitution of the United States, by undertaking to regulate commerce between the states; and (2) does it conflict with the fourteenth amendment to that constitution, by depriving the owners of the distillery of their property therein without ‘due process of law.’ All of the assignments of error offered are but variant statements of one or the other of these two propositions. The second of the propositions has been disposed of by this court in the case of Mugler v. Kansas [1887] wherein this very question was raised upon a statute similar, in all essential respects, to the provisions of the Iowa Code whose validity is contested. The court decided that a state has the right to prohibit or restrict the manufacture of intoxicating liquors within her limits; to prohibit all sale and traffic in them in said state; to inflict penalties for such manufacture and sale, and to provide regulations for the abatement as a common nuisance of the property used for such forbidden purposes; and that such legislation by a state is a clear exercise of her undisputed police power, which does not abridge the liberties or immunities of citizens of the United States, nor deprive any person of property without due process of law; nor in any way contravenes any provisions of the fourteenth amendment of the Constitution of the United States. Upon the authority of that case and of the numerous cases cited in the opinion of the court, we concur in the decision of the Iowa courts that the provisions here in question are not in conflict with the said amendment. The only question before us, therefore, is as to the relation of the Iowa statutes to the regulation of commerce among the states.

The line which separates the province of federal authority over the regulation of commerce from the powers reserved to the states, has engaged the attention of this court in a great number and variety of cases. The decisions in these cases, though they do not in a single instance assume to trace that line throughout its entire extent, or to state any rule further than to locate the line in each particular case as it arises, have almost uniformly adhered to the fundamental principles which CHIEF JUSTICE MARSHALL, in the case of Gibbons v. Ogden [1824], laid down as to the nature and extent of the grant of power to congress on this subject, and also of the limitations, express and implied, which it imposes upon state legislation with regard to taxation, to the control of domestic commerce, and to all persons and things within its limits of purely internal concern. According to the theory of that great opinion, the supreme authority in this country is divided between the government of the United States, whose action extends over the whole Union, but which possesses only certain powers enumerated in its written constitution, and the separate governments of the several states, which retain all powers not delegated to the Union. The power expressly conferred upon congress to regulate commerce is absolute and complete in itself, with no limitations other than are prescribed in the constitution; is to a certain extent exclusively vested in congress, so far free from state action; is co-extensive with the subject on which it acts, and cannot stop at the external boundary of a state, but must enter into the interior of every state, whenever required by the interests of commerce with foreign nations or among the several states. This power, however, does not comprehend the purely internal domestic commerce of a state, which is carried on between man and man within a state or between different parts of the same state. The distinction is stated in the following comprehensive language: ‘The genius and character of the whole government seem to be that its action is to be applied to all the external concerns of the nation, and to those internal concerns which affect the states generally; but not to those which are completely within a particular state, which do not affect other states, and with which it is not necessary to interfere for the purpose of executing some of the general powers of the government. The completely internal commerce of a state, then, may be considered as reserved for the state itself.’ Referring to certain laws of state legislatures which had a remote and considerable influence on commerce, the court said that the acknowledged power of the state to regulate its police, its domestic trade, and to govern its own people, may enable it to legislate over this subject to a great extent; but these and other state laws of the same kind are not considered as an exercise of the power to regulate commerce with foreign nations and among the several states, or enacted with a view to it; but, on the contrary, are considered as flowing from the acknowledged power of a state to provide for the safety and welfare of its people, and form a part of that legislation which embraces everything within the territory of a state not surrendered to the general government. Sacred, however, as these reserved powers are regarded, the court is particular to declare with emphasis the supreme and paramount authority of the constitution and laws of the United States relating to the regulation of commerce with foreign nations and among the several states, and that whenever these reserved powers, or any of them, are so exercised as to come in conflict with the free course of the powers vested in congress, the law of the state must yield to the supremacy of the federal authority, though such law may have been enacted in the exercise of a power undelegated and indisputably reserved to the states. In the light of these principles, and those which this court in its numerous decisions has added in illustration and more explicit development, it will not be difficult to determine whether the law of Iowa under consideration invades, either in purpose or effect, the domain of federal authority.

To support the affirmative, the plaintiff in error maintains that alcohol is, in itself, a useful commodity, not necessarily noxious, and is a subject of property; that the very statute under consideration, by various provisions, and especially by those which permit, in express terms, the manufacture of intoxicating liquors for mechanical, medicinal, culinary, or sacramental purposes, recognizes those qualities, and expressly authorizes the manufacture; that the manufacture being thus legalized, alcohol not being per se a nuisance, but recognized as property and the subject of lawful commerce, the state had no power to prohibit the manufacture of it for foreign sales. The main vice in this argument consists in the unqualified assumption that the statute legalizes the manufacture. The proposition that, supposing the goods were once lawfully called into existence, it would then be beyond the power of the state either to forbid or impede their exportation, may be conceded. Here, however, the very question underlying the case is whether the goods ever came lawfully into existence. It is a grave error to say that the statute ‘expressly authorized’ the manufacture, for it did not; to say that it had not prohibited the manufacture, for it had done so; to say that the goods were of Iowa’s lawful manufactures, for that is substantially the very point at issue. The exact statute is this: ‘No person shall manufacture or sell, ... directly or indirectly, any intoxicating liquors, except as hereinafter provided.’ In a subsequent section it is provided, further, that ‘nothing contained in this law shall prevent any persons from manufacturing in this state liquors for the purpose of being sold according to the provisions of this chapter, to be used for mechanical, medicinal, culinary, or sacramental purposes.’ Here then is, first, a sweeping prohibition against, not the manufacture and sale, not a dealing which is composed of both steps, and consequently must include manufacture as well as sale, or, e converso, sale as well as manufacture, in order to incur the denunciation of the statute, but against either the sale or the manufacture. The conjunction is disjunctive. The sale is forbidden, the manufacture is forbidden, and each is forbidden independently of the order. Such being the case on the subject of the lawfulness or unlawfulness of the manufacture, (which is the point before the court,) it is useless to argue as to the conditions under which it is permissible to hold intoxicating liquors in possession, or to sell them....

... We think the construction contended for by plaintiff in error would extend the words of the grant to congress, in the constitution, beyond their obvious import, and is inconsistent with its objects and scope. The language of the grant is, ‘Congress shall have power to regulate commerce with foreign nations and among the several states,’ etc. These words are used without any veiled or obscure signification.... No distinction is more popular to the common mind, or more clearly expressed in economic and political literature, than that between manufactures and commerce. Manufacture is transformation--the fashioning of raw materials into a change of form for use. The functions of commerce are different. The buying and selling and the transportation incidental thereto constitute commerce; and the regulation of commerce in the constitutional sense embraces the regulation at least of such transportation. The legal definition of the term, as given by this court in County of Mobile v. Kimball is as follows: ‘Commerce with foreign nations and among the states, strictly considered, consists in intercourse and traffic, including in these terms navigation and the transportation and transit of persons and property, as well as the purchase, sale, and exchange of commodities.’ If it be held that the term includes the regulation of all such manufactures as are intended to be the subject of commercial transactions in the future, it is impossible to deny that it would also include all productive industries that contemplate the same thing. The result would be that congress would be invested, to the exclusion of the states, with the power to regulate, not only manufacture, but also agriculture, horticulture, stock-raising, domestic fisheries, mining,--in short, every branch of human industry. For is there one of them that does not contemplate, more or less clearly, an interstate or foreign market? Does not the what-grower of the northwest, and the cotton-planter of the south, plant, cultivate, and harvest his crop with an eye on the prices at Liverpool, New York, and Chicago? The power being vested in congress and denied to the states, it would follow as an inevitable result that the duty would devolve on congress to regulate all of these delicate, multiform, and vital interests,--interests which in their nature are, and must be, local in all the details of their successful management.

It is not necessary to enlarge on, but only to suggest, the impracticability of such a scheme, when we regard the multitudinous affairs involved, and the almost infinite variety of their minute details.... A situation more paralyzing to the state governments, and more provocative of conflicts between the general government and the states, and less likely to have been what the framers of the constitution intended, it would be difficult to imagine....

... The judgment of the supreme court of Iowa is affirmed.