Charles Evans Hughes

“ Prosecution for crimes is but an application or enforcement of the law, and, if the prosecution continues, the law must continue to vivify it. The law here sought to be applied was deprived of force by the people themselves as the inescapable effect of their repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment. The principle involved is thus not archaic, but rather is continuing and vital-that the people are free to withdraw the authority they have conferred and, when withdrawn, neither the Congress nor the courts can assume the right to continue to exercise it. ”

“ It is not a question of the developing common law. It is a familiar maxim of the common law that, when the reason of a rule ceases, the rule also ceases. See Funk v. United States, 290 U.S. 371, 54 S.Ct. ”

“ But this provision applies, and could only apply, to the repeal of statutes by the Congress and to the exercise by the Congress of its undoubted authority to qualify its repeal and thus to keep in force its own enactments. It is a provision enacted in recognition of the principle that, unless the statute is so continued in force by competent authority, its repeal precludes further enforcement. The Congress, however, is powerless to expand or extend its constitutional authority. ”