This book tells the story of the states’ fight against national prohibition from before the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment through its repeal. It offers the most comprehensive treatment of the constitutional debate over prohibition ever assembled, incorporating not just Congress, the presidents, and the Supreme Court but political activity throughout the states of the Union. Unlike the present, where constitutional matters are largely ceded to the courts, prohibition involved active discussions among elected officials who took their constitutional oaths and obligations seriously. This dis ... More

This book tells the story of the states’ fight against national prohibition from before the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment through its repeal. It offers the most comprehensive treatment of the constitutional debate over prohibition ever assembled, incorporating not just Congress, the presidents, and the Supreme Court but political activity throughout the states of the Union. Unlike the present, where constitutional matters are largely ceded to the courts, prohibition involved active discussions among elected officials who took their constitutional oaths and obligations seriously. This discourse was serious, subtle, and widespread, drawing on deep roots in American political thought and modeling the extrajudicial constitutionalism called for by many scholars. Even in the wake of an ostensibly settling constitutional amendment, the logic of states’ rights structured most of the era’s debate. Understanding the constitutional thought of figures like Calvin Coolidge and Al Smith, as well as previously lesser-known state officials, shows how deeply Americans engaged in governance cared about federalism, jockeying with one another to claim fidelity to the Tenth Amendment and enumerated powers while reviling nationalism and nullification alike. Debates over federalism have become tied to and indeed almost reduced to southern opposition to civil rights. Prohibition demonstrates that states’ rights was not primarily a southern Democratic story; by way of contrast, northerners, Republicans, and progressives were committed to constitutional decentralization. After reconstructing these debates, the book concludes with a coda discussing the constitutional parallels and differences between the prohibition of alcohol in the 1920s and marijuana today.