Eighteenth Amendment

Amendment XVIII · Ratified January 16, 1919

In brief

Prohibited the manufacture, sale, and transportation of alcoholic beverages (Prohibition); later repealed by the Twenty-first Amendment.

Amendment XVIII · Ratified January 16, 1919

How often courts cite this over time

citing decisions per year

Court decisions citing this, by year.The marker is when it took effect. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.

Passed by Congress December 18, 1917. Ratified January 16, 1919. Repealed by amendment 21.

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.

Section 2. The Congress and the several States shall have concurrent power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

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 from the date of the submission hereof to the States by the Congress.

Landmark decisions

2 total

Dillon v. Gloss · 256 U.S. 368 (1921)
Dillon v. Gloss, 256 U.S. 368 (1921), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that Congress, when proposing a constitutional amendment under the authority given to it by Article V of the Constitution, may fix a definite period for its ratification, and further, that a seven-year period, such as that fixed by Congress in the resolution proposing the Eighteenth Amendment, is reasonable. Additionally, the Court, upon taking judicial notice that the Eighteenth Amendment became a part of the Constitution on January 16, 1919, when its ratification in the state legislatures…
Hawke v. Smith · 253 U.S. 221 (1920)
Hawke v. Smith, 253 U.S. 221 (1920), was a United States Supreme Court case coming out of the state of Ohio. It challenged the constitutionality of a provision in the state constitution allowing the state legislature's ratification of federal constitutional amendments to be challenged by a petition signed by six percent of Ohio voters.