Prohibition (law)

“ In law, as defined by Blackstone, prohibition is “ a writ directed to the judge and parties of a suit in any inferior court, commanding them to cease from the prosecution thereof, upon a surmise either that the cause originally or some collateral matter arising therein does, not belong to that jurisdiction, but to the cognizance of some other court.” A writ of prohibition is a prerogative writ—that is to say, it does not issue as of course, but is granted only on proper grounds being shown. ”

“ A law the violation of which in the class of instances in which the Government does seriously undertake to enforce it--bootlegging, smuggling and moonshining--is condoned, aided and abetted by hundreds of thousands of our best citizens? ”

“ The genius, the nature, the spirit of our state governments amount to a prohibition of such acts of legislation, and the general principles of law and reason forbid them. Per Chase, J. Ibid.
15. The words and intent of the prohibition embrace, 1st, every law that makes an action done before the framing of the law, and which was innocent when done, criminal, and punishes such action; 2d, every law that aggravates a crime, or makes it greater than it was when committed; 3d, every law that changes the punishment, and inflicts a greater punishment than the law annexed to the crime when committed ”

“ I said, "that they are confronted with no other choice but that of either submitting to the full rigor of Prohibition, of trying to procure a law which nullifies the Constitution, or of expressing their resentment against an outrage on the first principles of the Constitution by contemptuous disregard of the law." It is a deplorable choice of evils; a state of things which it is hardly too much to call appalling in its potentialities of civic demoralization. ”

“ WELL MEANING exhorters, shocked at the spectacle of millions of perfectly decent and law-abiding Americans showing an utter disregard of the Prohibition law, are prone to insist that to violate this law, or to abet its violation, is just as immoral as to violate any other criminal law. ”

“ If a law is not enforced to any extent, it is a thousand times worse than if there was no such law on the statute book. Any prohibition law under the present condition of public sentiment is difficult of enforcement ”

“ It is chiefly in a small, but extremely prominent and influential, body of over-sophisticated people--specialists of one kind or another--that the principle of liberty has fallen into the disrepute to which I have referred. The prime reason why the Prohibition law is so light-heartedly violated by all sorts and conditions of men, why it is held in contempt by hundreds of thousands of our best and most respected citizens, is that the law is a gross outrage upon personal liberty. Many, indeed, would commit the violation as a mere matter of self-indulgence ”

“ It is true that the individuals whom the Government hunts down by its spies, its arrests, its prosecutions, are men who make a business of breaking the Prohibition law, and most of whom would probably just as readily break other laws if money was to be made by it. ”

“ One prohibition is, "that no person shall be deprived of his property, immunities, or privileges, put out of the protection of the law, or deprived of his life, liberty, or estate, but by judgment of his peers or the law of the land." ”

“ Nor can I discover any substantial ground for holding that such destruction could probably aid in an appreciable way the enforcement of any prohibition law then within the competency of Congress to enact. It is not enough merely to assert such a probability; it must arise from the facts. ”

“ Because the enforcement of all laws is in some degree imperfect, it does not follow that there is no disgrace and no mischief in the spectacle of a law enforced with spectacular vigor, and even violence, in a thousand cases where such enforcement cannot be successfully resisted, and deliberately treated as a dead letter in a hundred thousand cases where its enforcement would show how widespread and intense is the people's disapproval of the law. ”

“ Our journals do not make pleasant reading for good Americans these days. They are filled with headlines, which concern the Prohibition law, morning after morning. Not long ago I picked up my newspaper and found no less than seventeen columns devoted to stories of what the police in New York City alone were doing, or trying to do, to make the Volstead Act anything but a huge joke. ”

“ I am bitterly opposed to drunkenness. Prohibition has not cured it. We have had it long enough now to see its terrible errors. The lions have heard the crack of the whip, but instead of being overcome, overpowered, cowering in corners, we have the spectacle of a determination to pay no attention to the lashings of the law. Half of us willfully disobey this iniquitous legislation—and are proud of our disobedience. What is to be done about it? The more teeth that are put into the Volstead Act, the more teeth the lions show. They growl and fight. They will not be mastered. ”

“ A law punishing drunkenness, which is a public nuisance, comes under the head I have been speaking of; a law forbidding a man to drink for fear that he may become a drunkard does not. And in fact the prohibitionists themselves instinctively recognize the difference, and avoid, so far as they can, offending the sense of liberty by so direct an attack upon it. ”

“ He was the author of the famous prohibition law enacted by the Maine Legislature in 1851, and traveled widely in the United States, Canada, and Great Britain, speaking on temperance questions and helping in the organization of societies for the furtherance of the reform. In 1880 he was the Prohibition candidate for President of the United States. ”

“ Upon the mind of a man intensely convinced that the law is an outrage, how much impression can be produced by the mere fact that it was passed by Congress and the Legislatures, when the real attitude of the members of those bodies is such as it is seen to be in their private conduct? How much of a moral sanction would be given to a law against larceny if a large proportion of the men who enacted the law were themselves receivers of stolen goods ? ”

“ In order that a person should entertain a genuine feeling that the Prohibition Amendment is entitled to the same kind of respect as the general body of criminal law, it is necessary--even if he waives all those questions of Constitutional principle which have been dwelt upon in previous chapters--that he should regard drinking as a crime. ”

“ It has been realized by a few deep thinkers that no prohibitions have to be made against what nobody ever thinks of doing, and that the existence of a prohibitive law is proof of a widespread tendency to do the thing prohibited. All prohibition is, from the point of view of both conscious and unconscious psychology, unscientific. ”

“ The people who object to Prohibition are exultantly told by their masters that it is idle for them to think of throwing off their chains; that the law is riveted upon them by the Constitution, and the possibility of repeal is too remote for practical consideration. Thus the one thought that might mitigate resentment and discountenance resistance, the thought that freedom might be regained by repeal, is set aside ”

“ The thing is on the statute-books--nay, in the very Constitution itself --and to offend against it, they say, is as much a crime as to commit larceny, arson or murder. But they may repeat this doctrine until Doomsday, and make little impression upon persons who exercise their common sense. The law that makes larceny, arson or murder a crime merely registers, and emphasizes, and makes effective through the power of the Government, the dictates of the moral sense of practically all mankind ”

“ To make conspicuous before the whole American people the fact that the law is being steadily and complacently violated in millions of decent American homes would bring about a realization of the demoralizing effect of Prohibition which its sponsors, fanatical as they are, very wisely shrink from facing. ”

“ He speaks bitterly of the proposal to permit "light wines and beer," and asks whether any one would propose to permit light burglary or light arson. That man evidently regards indulgence in any intoxicating liquor as a crime, and he looks upon the law as a prohibition of that crime. And he is essentially right, if the law is right. For while the law does not in its express terms make drinking a crime, its intention--and its practical effect so far as regards the great mass of the people--is precisely that. ”

“ THE Prohibitionists contend, when we who are but human suggest that the Eighteenth Amendment and the Volstead Act should be changed, that the law is the law; and now that these are part of our statutes, they are there to stay, that they must not be tampered with or altered in any way; that it is up to every good American to accept them, not to complain, not to make any utterance which would be apt to disturb the sweet peace these laws are intended to bring to us. ”

“ When attention is called to the wholesale disregard of the law, contempt for the law, and hostility to the law which is so manifest in the big cities, the champions of Prohibition in the press--including the New York press--never tire of saying that it is only in New York and a few other great cities that this state of things exists. ”

“ From the standpoint of fundamental political doctrine, it makes no difference whether 40 million, or 50 million, or 60 million people out of a hundred million desired to put into the Constitution a provision which is an offense against the underlying idea of any Constitution, an injury to the American Federal system, an outrage upon the first principles both of law and of liberty. ”

“ Before dismissing this subject it will be well to consider one favorite argument of those who contend that Prohibition is no more obnoxious to the charge of being a violation of personal liberty than are certain other laws which are accepted as matters of course. A law prohibiting narcotic drugs, they say, imposes a restraint upon personal liberty of the same sort as does a law prohibiting alcoholic liquors. ”

“ Said the Texan: “There always have been, and there always will be, certain besetting sins, and you cannot abolish them by law. People have kept getting drunk ever since Eve got drunk in the Garden of Eden, and I reckon they always will, and you can’t prohibit it by law.”
Poor old mother Eve! The apple must have had hard cider in it. This was the argument of a lawyer, and fairly averages the arguments urged throughout the State against prohibition. Agitation and fair discussion are all that are needed to convince every man that the thing to do with crime is to prohibit it. ”

“ Altogether, we have here a case of one element of the population decreeing the mode of life of another element of whose circumstances and desires they have no understanding, and who are affected by the decree in a wholly different way from that in which they themselves are affected by it. Many other points might be made, further to emphasize the monstrosity of the Prohibition that has been imposed upon our country. Of these perhaps the most important one is the way in which the law operates so as to be effective against the poor, and comparatively impotent against the rich. ”

“ And is it not of some importance that this great group, who are the mainstay of the Republic, should be laying aside something for the future?
The Prohibitionists will say that they have no sympathy with anyone who willfully breaks the law. But you cannot argue with people who count it no sin to disregard a statute. ”

“ We talk of Prohibition as a good thing for the generations to come; but how about disregard for the law as it will affect our children and our children’s children? Drunk, they might not be responsible; sober, to their higher selves they are accountable for their shortcomings in regard to our statutes. A lack of veneration for an orderly carrying out of a mandate is a serious thing. But to hear the young people talking these days about the sanctity of the Eighteenth Amendment is not a heartening experience. ”

“ We are dealing with a statutory prohibition and we are simply concerned to ascertain whether in the light of a plain public policy and of the proper administration of justice, conduct induced as stated should be deemed to be within that prohibition. We have no occasion to consider hypothetical cases of crimes so heinous or revolting that the applicable law would admit of no exceptions. ”

“ By this term is meant the people who wish a modification of the Volstead Act, permitting the sale of light wines and beer. Indeed, this party predominated in the final returns.
166 The Anti-Saloon League has scorned the Digest’s figures; yet one has a feeling that if the showing had been in favor of a strict observance and upholding of the present Prohibition law, a different attitude might have been observed on its part. It is but human, after all, to wish the tide to turn in the direction one has spiritedly advocated. Even the “moists” must have been surprised at their own brilliant showing. ”

“ It is possible that enforcement will gradually become more and more efficient, and that the spirit of resistance may thus gradually be worn out. On the other hand it is also possible that means of evading the law may become more and more perfected by invention and otherwise, and that the melancholy and humiliating spectacle which we are now witnessing may be of very long duration. ”