ARTICLE XVIII. Proposed by Congress December 19, 1917; proclaimed adopted January 29, 1919. Section 1. After one year from the ratification of this article the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United States and all territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof for beverage purposes is hereby prohibited.184 184 On June 7, 1920, the Supreme Court of the United States, disposing in one opinion of seven cases arising in New Jersey, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Kentucky, Wisconsin, and Missouri, held that by Article V of the Constitution (Note 129) the power to make this Amendment was reserved by the people. As the source of all power is in the people, it is difficult to conceive of an invalid amendment if it has been carried through by regular proceedings. While originally the people may not have believed a subject one for consideration in the Constitution, they may change their opinion, and their will is the supreme law. The Supreme Court said that the first section (the one declaring the prohibition) "is operative throughout the entire territorial limits of the United States, binds all legislative bodies, courts, public officers and individuals within those limits, and of its own force invalidates every legislative act—whether by Congress, by a State legislature, or by a territorial assembly - which authorizes or sanctions what the section prohibits." That gives a remarkably striking illustration of the practical operation of that marvelous invention of American statesmanship, the Constitution as the supreme law of the land, before which all conflicting constitutions and laws are nullities, as ineffectual as if they never existed. In like manner the Fourteenth Amendment, as has been seen, struck racial limitations out of northern as well as southern State constitutions, wiped away volumes of enactments by the Congress and by the legislatures of the States, and rendered useless except as history a great number of judicial decisions upon the status of the slave. It was contended that "two-thirds of both Houses" in Article V means two thirds of the membership of each House, and that as such a vote did not propose this Amendment, it was invalid. But the Supreme Court repeated what it had held in an earlier case, that two thirds of the members present, assuming the presence of a quorum (majority), may propose an Amendment. It was held further that under Article V a State cannot ratify or reject an Amendment by a referendum; action must be taken by its legislature or by a convention. Section 2. The Congress and the several States shall have concurrent power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.185 185 The meaning of this language provoked a great deal of discussion while the Amendment was pending. Where State and Federal courts have "concurrent jurisdiction" of a subject, for example, the one whose jurisdiction is first invoked retains the case to the exclusion of the other. Did Congress mean anything like that when it wrote "concurrent power" in the Amendment? Would the inadequate legislation of an unsympathetic State prevent Congress from legislating? Would early legislation by Congress exclude a State from the field? The Supreme Court said that the words do not mean joint power, or require that legislation by Congress must be sanctioned by a State, or that the power is divided along lines which distinguish State commerce from interstate. It was evidently the purpose to make use of the experience of many of the States in enforcing prohibitory laws and to put with that experience the power of the Nation, the National power to be employed more vigorously where a State might be indifferent. Section 3. This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the Legislatures of the several States, as provided in the Constitution, within seven years 186 from the date of the submission hereof to the States by the Congress. 186 No other Amendment contains such a limitation as to time. This was introduced upon a showing that many old proposals are still pending, one against the extension of slavery. In 1873, in the days of the "salary grab", the Senate of Ohio took up and approved by resolution, after it had been pending for eighty-four years without ratification by three fourths of the States, what had been originally proposed as the Second Amendment, prohibiting a change of the pay of Congressmen until an election had intervened. ARTICLE XIX. Proposed by Congress June 5, 1919; proclaimed August 26, 1920. Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.187 187 The resolution of proposal was first introduced in Congress by Senator A. A. Sargent of California at the request of Miss Susan B. Anthony, on June 10, 1878, nearly fortyone years before it was passed by both Houses. Eleven years before that, when the Reform Bill of 1867 was pending in the English Parliament, which made manhood suffrage almost general by extending it beyond the upper and middle classes to which it had been limited by the Reform Bill of 1832, John Stuart Mill proposed an amendment that the Bill include suffrage by women. The proposal was first taken as "something droll" (McCarthy's "History of Our Own Times"), but it finally produced “a very interesting, grave, and able discussion in the House of Commons." The amendment received 73 votes; there were 196 against it. In 1884 the third Reform Bill extended suffrage to all males except paupers, lunatics, and criminals. The franchise was given to women in 1919, and the first woman to take a seat in the House of Commons, elected in November and admitted in December of that year, Lady Nancy Astor of Plymouth, was born in Virginia of the Langhorne family. The first woman entered the Australian Parliament in 1921, and in the same year Miss Agnes McPhail was elected to the Canadian Parliament. In March, 1922, the committee on privileges of the English House of Lords granted the petition of Viscountess Rhondda as heiress to the seat which her father had occupied in that body. In many States in the Union women enjoyed suffrage in State affairs before this Amendment. Wyoming enfranchised women in 1869, Colorado in 1893, Utah and Idaho in 1896, and Washington in 1910. In some other States they enjoyed suffrage with respect to minor offices. As the qualifications stated in the Constitution entitling one to a seat in the House of Representatives (Notes 8 and 9) are applicable to a woman, a female member of the House was elected by Montana in 1916, nearly four years before this Amendment was proclaimed. The first woman thus to be distinguished by a seat in the Congress of the United States was Miss Jeannette Rankin. This Amendment, being the Supreme law of the land, rendered ineffectual forever the provisions in many Acts of Congress, in many State constitutions and in the enactments of many State legislatures containing the word "male" with respect to suffrage. The following table shows the order and manner of ratification by the first thirty-six (the necessary three fourths) States, the letter R. standing for Republican and the letter |