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The Green Bag

To remedy the evils wrought and to delegated to Congress by the states, and stem the tide of popular disapproval the could not be re-delegated by Congress so-called Wilson Act was passed. In even to the states themselves except it it was provided "that all fermented, under the sanction of a constitutional distilled or other intoxicating liquors amendment. Nevertheless it to all in transported into any state or territory tents and purposes conceded the right of or remaining therein for use, consump re-delegation and merely justified the tion, sale or storage therein, shall upon grant by calling it something else. arrival in such state or territory be "The Constitution does not provide," the subject to the operation and effect of opinion said, "that interstate commerce should the laws of such state or territory, be free, but by the grant of this exclusive enacted in the exercise of its police power to regulate it, it was left free except as Congress might impose restraint. . . . powers, to the same extent and in the The laws of Iowa under consideration in same manner as though such liquids or Bowman v. Railway Company, 125 U. S. 465, liquors had been produced in such state and Leisy v. Hardin, 135 U. S. 100, were or territory, and shall not be exempt enacted in the exercise of the police power of therefrom by reason of being introduced the state, and not at all as regulations of commerce with foreign nations and among the therein in original packages or other states, but as they inhibited the receipt of wise." an imported commodity, or its disposition But if the logic of Leisy v. Hardin before it had ceased to become an article of prevailed, the Wilson Act itself was trade between one state and another, or unconstitutional. Sustained, however, another country and this, they amounted in effect to a regulation of such commerce. it had to be unless the Court cared to Hence, it was held that inasmuch as inter face one or other of the horns of the state commerce ... is national in its char dilemma of popular indignation or an acter, and must be governed by a uniform overruled decision. It was therefore system, so long as Congress did not pass any sustained in the case of In re Rahrer* law to regulate it specifically, or in such a way as to allow the laws of the state to and the vested rights and dignities of operate upon it, Congress thereby indicated the case of Leisy v. Hardin protected, its will that such commerce should be free but by a process of reasoning which is and untrammeled, and that therefore the difficult to follow and which if followed laws of Iowa referred to were inoperative, in and adhered to will lead to the most so far as they amounted to regulations of foreign or interstate commerce ... It fol serious governmental consequences and lowed as a corollary, that when Congress revolutionize our whole constitutional acted at all, the result of its action must be theory. The Supreme Court did not to operate as a restraint upon that perfect attempt to deny the fact that it had freedom which its silence insured. Congress has now spoken, and declared that imported already decided that the control of Con liquors or liquids shall, upon arrival in a gress was exclusive until the original state, fall within the category of domestic package had been broken and the prop articles of a similar nature ... It does not erty mingled with the common property admit of argument that Congress can neither of the state, and covered the first sale in delegate its own powers nor enlarge those of the original package. Nor did it deny the state. . . . But this furnishes no sup port to the position that Congress should not, that it was well settled and that it had in. the exercise of the discretion reposed in it, frequently held, that the regulation of concluding that the common interests did interstate commerce had been expressly not require entire freedom in the traffic in ardent spirits, enact the law in question. In doing so Congress has not attempted to dele
 * 140 U. S. 545.