American democracy has a lineage of written records that we can trace to show the development of our nation, and how each document builds on those before it to make our foundation of freedom stronger. In this video, the documents conceived during World War I and the years immediately following it are examined. Educators from noted American universities share their insights on: Espionage Act and Sedition Act (1917 and 1918) — These acts were written to silence opponents of the war and conscription. Many Americans believed these acts violated First Amendment rights of freedom of speech. In the landmark case, Schenck v. United States, the Supreme Court disagreed. Chief Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes delivered his famous “clear and present danger” opinion. Selective Service Act (1917) — The United States entered World War I in April of 1917. The following month, to meet the need for troops, Congress passed the Selective Service Act, which made it mandatory for men between the ages of 21 and 30 register for the draft. Woodrow Wilson s Fourteen Points Peace Plan (1918) — President Wilson presented his Fourteen Points peace plan to Congress just two months after German surrender. It outlined his plan for building peace in the post-war world and the establishment of The League of Nations. The Treaty of Versailles (1919) — At the close of World War I, the leaders of France, Italy, England, and the United States met in the palace of Versailles to work out a peace plan. Although President Woodrow Wilson objected, the treaty was very punitive toward Germany. It planted the seeds of rebellion in Germany. The Volstead Act (1919) — In January of 1919, the 18th Amendment was ratified. It prohibited the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages. The Volstead Act was passed by Congress to enforce the 18th Amendment. The 19th Amendment (1920) — The 19th Amendment, written into law in 1920, granted women the right to vote.
Medicinal Whisky
FIVE judges of the United States Supreme Court uphold the Constitutionality of the law which limits the quantity of medicinal whisky which physicians may prescribe.
This means that there is nothing to prevent Congress from substituting its judgment for the judgment of the individual physician in deciding to what extent alcohol is necessary or valuable as a medicine.
From this decision four judges of the Supreme Court record their dissent.
Among the majority are two judges most widely known for their liberal views-the oldest member of the Court in both years and service, Justice Holmes, and the writer of the opinion, Justice Brandeis. The others in the majority are Chief Justice Taft, Justice Van Deventer, and Justice Sanford. In the minority are Justice Sutherland, who wrote the dissenting opinion, Justice McReynolds, Justice Butler, and Justice Stone.
To many physicians this decision will seem to be the Court’s approval of an invasion of their right, as scientific men, to be governed by the facts as they understand them and not by the opinion of a political body. What the Supreme Court decided, however, is not whether the judgment of Congress is better than that of the physician, but whether Congress has the right to substitute its opinion-better or worse-for that of the individual physician. In this case the right of Congress rests upon that provision of the Constitution which gives Congress power to make laws necessary and proper for carrying into execution the prohibition of the manufacture, sale, and transportation of intoxicating beverages. The remedy, if any is needed, lies, according to this decision, not with the courts, but with Congress. Of course, the Supreme Court would not uphold Congress in carrying the Eighteenth Amendment into execution by unreasonable law. Sufficient medical opinion, however, against the need of whisky as a medicine was laid before Congress to make it clear, in the opinion of the majority of the Court, that the limitation upon prescribing alcohol was not unreasonable.
It is interesting to note that in upholding the provision against prescribing malt liquor the decision of the Supreme Court, in a former case, was unanimous.
Source: The Outlook, 8 December 1926
Referendums on the Liquor Issue Part 2
A VERY bad form of referendum proposal is the one to be presented to the voters of New York State on November 2. This particular referendum proposes, in effect, to ask the Congress of the United States to permit the forty-eight separate States to construe, interpret, and enforce a provision of the National Constitution, namely, the Eighteenth Amendment. It is utterly futile and in its effect would be utterly disappointing to both wets and drys. As Justice Cram said the other day in upholding the abstract right of the Legislture to offer such a referendum to the people of the State:
The question is vital because the Congress could not Constitutionally do that which those voting in the affirmative would by such vote suggest that it should do. Congress cannot abdicate its power to define . . . what shall be deemed an intoxicating beverage and confer upon the States the right to define for purposes of enforcement through Federal tribunals what shall and shall not be deemed a violation of the Eighteenth Amendment.
No matter whether a Congress were wet or dry, it would not and should not abrogate its power over a provision of the National Constitution and leave to forty-eight States the chaotic construction and interpretation and enforcement. One State might fix the maximum alcoholic content under the Eighteenth Amendment at one-half of one per cent, another at four per cent, another at eight per cent, and another at twelve or fourteen per cent so as to include light wines among the non-intoxicating beverages. The result would be anarchy. As Webster said in his reply to Hayne’s somewhat similar demand for the State of South Carolina in the matter of the tariff about 1830:
The doctrine is not only unconstitutional but impracticable. Under its operation the tariff would be void in South Carolina, but in Pennsylvania or Kentucky, where protection has been in favor, it would be enforced.
There would thus be four-and-twenty interpreters of constitutional law, each with the power to decide for itself, and none with authority to bind anybody else, and the Constitution would be reduced to a collection of topics for everlasting controversy.
It is no answer to say that the standard set up by the separate States must be a standard non-intoxicating in fact, as implied in the language of the proposed referendum. Who would determine what is intoxicating? The State itself. The National Congress would abdicate, under the terms of the referendum, and leave the ruling to the separate States. There might be an appeal from the standard of any one of the States to the Supreme Court of the United States. But that would seem to be futile. The Supreme Court seems to have made it clear again and again that it does not regard itself as a legislative body, but that it looks to Congress for the rule and the penalty. If Congress refrains from establishing a rule or a penalty, there would seem nothing left for the Supreme Court to do but to accept what each State regards as appropriate legislation for its own area, whether the State legislation follows the rule of one-half of one per cent or of ten per cent alcoholic content. If the Supreme Court actually did seek to establish a legislative rule as to what is or is not intoxicating at the lower margin of alcoholic content, it would take upOn itself a matter of infinite controversy. What is intoxicating in fact? An alcoholic content close to the margin may affect the same person constitutionally to-day and unconstitutionally tomorrow.
The essential and significant thing about this New York referendum proposal is that it would, if accepted by Congress, definitely bar that body from laying down a rule of enforcement and transfer this power to the States. Under this plan, neither the Supreme Court nor Congress can save the Eighteenth Amendment from practical nullification. The proposal differs from the position taken by Robert Y. Hayne, of South Carolina, in his famous debates with Daniel Webster in the Senate of the United States between January 19 and January 27, 1830, only in that it requests Congress to put the stamp of approval upon the nullification. Hayne took it for granted that a State could nullify what it did not like, what it regarded as improper and unconstitutional. This New York referendum, in effect, asks Congress to refrain from action and permit each State, if it pleases, to nullify in practice the Eighteenth Amendment.
Source: The Outlook, 27 October 1926
Referendums on the Liquor Issue Part 1
IT is perhaps not very logical for the country to be so wrought up over the liquor issue that it thinks of very little else. There are a number of exceedingly important issues which ought now to be under public discussion, and the liquor issue is in a sense acting as a red herring across the trail of these very important matters; but there is no doubt that the people are interested in the liquor question, and the people really make the issues of a campaign, after all.
There is a great deal of loose thinking and loose talking about this question. Although prohibition slowly developed as a sentiment in this country over a long period of years, the final consummation of it came quickly, particularly because of the war feeling, and it came before there had been much formation of public opinion about it in the larger cities of the East, although the rural districts generally had argued about it a long time and had slowly been making up their minds in a multitude of local-option campaigns which took place throughout the land.
THE result of the swiftness with which prohibition finally came has been to offend the honest views of a great many persons and to make enforcement difficult in many parts of the country. Side by side with these facts there is much evidence of the very wholesome effect of the new National policy over large areas and with large numbers of people. The old saloon conditions and the evils of poverty and misery and crime and bad politics that grew out of them are looked back to by millions as if it had been the passing of a pestilence.
Recently the demand has been made in various parts of the country for some means of getting at perhaps the revised will of the people through referendum upon this vexed question. Certain circumstances have lent force to this suggestion. In the first place, the political parties themselves, the Democratic and the Republican, are split wide open on the issue and are impotent to do much. Because the Republican Party is in trouble over this issue in New York State, let no man think that the Democratic Party is not in trouble too. In Washington-that is, Nationally-the Democratic Party is split much more widely than the Republican. It may conceivably turn out that both of them are impotent to effect any revision of the will of the people, if such revision is contemplated by the people.
Now the people have a perfect right to a revision of their will if they wish to make it. And in a democracy, if the reprsentative party system fails them upon a crucial occasion, the people have a perfect right to resort to the method of the referendum in order that their will may be determined. None of us in America is afraid of what the people may desire and vote if they are thoroughly aroused and informed upon the issue.
But it ought to be an honest referendum and a thorough one, which means something and effects something. This referendum must be National in scope, taken by States, because prohibition has become a completely National problem, involved in the National Constitution. it should be taken upon the Eighteenth Amendment itself; either upon the question of repeal or some question of definite change in the Amendment which could be understood by all the people. While the Eighteenth Amendment remains no change in statute, the Volstead Act or any other, is going to be satisfactory to those who are demanding a revision of the National policy upon prohibition. More than this, provision should be made in connection with the referendum for the complete carrying out of the public will when it is Nationally determined. The carrying out of the will of the people should not be left in this instance to the political parties if both of them continue to be paralyzed in the presence of this issue. The likelihood of a third party to carry out the popular will on this issue is not great, in view of the dangers of multi-party government, as our people have witnessed them in Europe since the Great War. Probably we must solve our problem through the two-party system or the referendum.
In the meantime all American citizens should demand the enforcement of the existing Constitution and law. Upon relatively unimportant matters a comparative laxness of enforcement may not be definitely fatal to a country, but widespread defiance of enforcement on a question of paramount importance in the public mind is fraught with real peril to popular institutions. So far as prohibition is concerned, nobody knows whether it can be enforced, because there never has been an adequate enforcement system attempted. Enforcement has been the sport of politics of both parties. General Andrews, the chief enforcement officer of the Nation, has been on the verge of resignation again and again because he has no final responsible power over his own lieutenants. No time should be lost in seeing that he gets such power. Thus far he has pleaded unavailingly for an enforcement unit inside the Treasury Department of which he shall, be master.
The conditions resulting from the present system of enforcement are widely regarded as intolerable and are a matter of deep concern to the people at large. Lawlessness is the most dangerous enemy of republics and directly endangers the welfare of the mass of the people in their homes, their happiness, and their savings. It is impossible for any country to remain permanently half law-abiding and half lawless.
Source: The Outlook, 27 October 1926