According to my cite, an amendment wasn't required and they never heard of FDR. Again I ask, where did you read it was?
Or are you just saying that you think a prohibition amendment should have been required ?
That is correct. It was only after FDRs packing that the legal theory appeared that the Federal Govt. would not need amendments to do things like this.
According to my cite, an amendment wasn't required and they never heard of FDR. Again I ask, where did you read it was?
Under current interpretation, an amendment wouldn't be required. Liberals like to pretend it was always that way, but until FDR packed the court, an amendment had been considered necessary.
Where did I read it? In any number of histories of the US and our laws. You have to be careful of the massive revisionism in US history that has taken place since WWII.
Until the 30s, the Federal Govt. was considered to be empowered to defend the coast, deliver the mail and very little else. All other powers were reserved to the States or the people.
In the 1880s Grover Cleveland vetoed a Drought Relief Bill.
It was to to appropriate $10,000 to distribute seed grain among drought-stricken farmers in Texas.
He did so because he could find no Constitutional basis for the power to spend the peoples money on such a thing.
This was the common understanding of the limits of Federal Power before FDR.
So9