How Protectionist Wine and Liquor Laws Violate the Constitution
The U.S. Supreme Court has struck down protectionist state wine and liquor laws on the grounds that they illegally discriminated against out-of-state wineries and out-of-state alcohol retailers. Yet earlier this week, a federal appellate court upheld an Indiana law that forbids out-of-state retailers from shipping wine directly to Indiana consumers.
What’s going on?
The case is Chicago Wine Company v. Braun. At issue is a state law forbidding retailers that are not based in Indiana from shipping wine directly to Indiana consumers, either via services like FedEx or UPS, or via the retailer’s own fleet of vehicles.
The constitutional question at the heart of the case revolves around an important yet lesser-known legal doctrine called the “Dormant Commerce Clause.” This doctrine holds that the Constitution’s Commerce Clause, in addition to authorizing Congress to regulate commerce between the states, also forbids the states themselves from erecting their own interstate economic barriers.
As James Madison explained in Federalist No. 42, one of the key purposes of the Commerce Clause was to eliminate the assorted tariffs, monopolies, and other interstate trade impediments passed by the states under the Articles of Confederation. “A very material objec
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