The only constitutional amendment ratified by the electorate rather than legislators, the Twenty‐first was also the only amendment to repeal another, the Eighteenth. Not quite fourteen years elapsed between the adoption of the national prohibition amendment on 16 January 1919, and the ratification of the Twenty‐first Amendment on 5 December 1933.
National prohibition sharply reduced but did not altogether eliminate the use of alcoholic beverages in the United States. Neither state and local law enforcement officials nor the small federal Prohibition Bureau authorized by the 1919 Volstead Act could cope with the variety and volume of prohibition violations. The longer sentences and larger fines imposed by the 1929 federal Jones “Five‐and Ten” Act had little effect. Nor did a series of Supreme Court decisions upholding concurrent powers of state and federal enforcement, United States v. Lanza (1922); warrantless automobile searches, Carroll v. United States (1925); restrictions on medicinal liquor prescriptions, Lambert v. Yellowley (1926); and wiretap telephone surveillance Olmstead v. United States (1928).
Opposition to prohibition came from politically active groups of recent immigrants who saw prohibition as a slap at their cultures and antiprohibition organizations, which argued that the liquor ban encouraged crime and disrespect for all law, while simultaneously giving the federal government too much power over people's personal lives. The economic collapse of the early 1930s brought arguments that prohibition took away jobs and liquor taxes.
The Democratic party endorsed prohibition repeal in 1932, and its sweeping November victory brought quick congressional action. On 20 February 1933, Congress adopted, by more than the required two‐thirds, an amendment resolution that would repeal the Eighteenth Amendment and prohibit transportation of intoxicating beverages into any U.S. state, territory, or possession in violation of its laws. The resolution also called for ratification of the proposed amendment by state conventions rather than legislatures. The Supreme Court in Hawke v. Smith (1920), overturning a 1919 Ohio referendum on the Eighteenth Amendment, had stirred demands that this never‐employed alternative Article V procedure be used so that convention delegate elections would provide a direct expression of popular opinion on the proposed constitutional amendment. During 1933 thirty‐eight states held delegate elections: 73 percent of 21 million voters cast ballots for candidates who favored an end to national prohibition, and only South Carolina voters rejected repeal. Ratification conventions quickly certified the results, and on 5 December 1933, when Pennsylvania, Ohio, and finally Utah acted, national prohibition came to an end. Despite the fact that alcohol consumption rates remained below pre‐1920 levels for forty years after national prohibition, the federal effort to forbid adult use of alcohol has been generally perceived as a failure, a futile policy, and a misapplication of the constitutional amending process.
See also Constitutional Amendments.
— David E. Kyvig
The Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of the United States. Copyright © 1992, 2005 by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.
