Henry Billings Brown

“ Every possible presumption is in favor of the validity of a statute, and this continues until the contrary is shown beyond a rational doubt. One branch of the government cannot encroach on the domain of another without danger. ”

“ We cannot fail to recognize the growing sentiment in this country in favor of some restrictions upon the sale of ardent spirits; and whether such restrictions shall take the form of a license tax upon dealers, a total prohibition of all manufacture or sale whatever, or the assumption by the state government of the power to supply all liquors to its inhabitants, is a matter exclusively for the states to decide. ”

“ If a state cannot prohibit her own citizens from importing liquors, as well as buying them at home, the Wilson bill is set at naught, and the prohibitory laws of the several states rendered inoperative in a vital particular. The fact that these liquors were imported for complainant's own use and consumption, instead of for sale, raises no question under the federal constitution. Both are under the ban of the statute. ”

“ The constitution does, indeed, require of each state a republican form of government, and, in the tenth section of the first article, imposes certain limitations upon state action, none of which have any relevancy to the subject under consideration. Except as restricted by the provisions of this section, the several state legislatures possess, so far as any interference by the federal government is concerned, full legislative powers, and, with respect to the subject of intoxicating liquors, are, since the passage of the Wilson bill, untrammeled by the federal constitution. ”

“ The opposition between the constitution and the law should be such that the judge feels a clear and strong conviction of their incompatibility with each other.' Still more explicit is the language of Chief Justice Waite in the Sinking Fund Cases, 99 U.S. 700, 718: 'It is our duty, when required in the regular course of judicial proceedings, to declare an act of congress void if not within the legislative power of the United States ”

“ Rinker, 102 U.S. 123, this court held an act of the legislature of Texas, taxing intoxicating liquors, to be inoperative only so far as it discriminated against imported wines or beers; and that, as defendant was also engaged in selling other liquors, an injunction was properly refused. That the provision that the commissioner in purchasing the liquors shall give preference to those of domestic manufacture is separable from the main purpose of the act seems to me too clear for argument. ”