That is a new one for me. Have a link?
The Supreme Court issued its most sweeping decision concerning the Eighteenth Amendment in June 1920. Seven cases, each raising fundamental questions concerning the constitutionality of the amendment, were consolidated by the Court and labeled the National Prohibition Cases.
A host of highly regarded attorneys, including Elihu Root, William D. Guthrie, and Levy Mayer, as well as Herbert A. Rice and Thomas F. McCran, attorneys general for Rhode Island and New Jersey respectively, represented the appellants. The oral arguments lasted for five days, an unusually long time for even the most important cases.
The argument of Elihu Root attracted the most attention. The former Secretary of War, Secretary of State, and senator represented a New Jersey brewer.
Root asserted that the Eighteenth Amendment was simply unconstitutional. Root from the outset opposed the form, spirit, purpose, and effect of the Eighteenth Amendment. He told friends that its denial of personal liberty, its potential for eroding respect for law, and its alteration of the balance between local and national government alarmed him."
Root gave a memorable peroration:
" --- If your Honors shall find a way to declare this so-called Amendment to the Federal Constitution valid, then the Government of the United States as it has been known to us and to our forefathers will have ceased to exist. Your Honors will have discovered a new legislative authority hitherto unknown to the Constitution and quite untrammelled by any of its limitations. You will have declared that two thirds of a quorum of each House of the Congress, plus a majority of a quorum of each of the two Houses of the Legislatures of three fourths of the States, may enact any legislation they please without any reference to the limitations of the Constitution, including the Bill of Rights itself.
In that case, Your Honors, John Marshall need never have sat upon that bench."
Fantastic post. It's a keeper. The prose is just so elegant. Root deserves more fame. But of course it's bullshit, and at least in this matter, Scotus presumably managed to avoid crossing a bridge too far, at least here, then. If the polity can't manage booze constitutionally incorporated in its failed empirical experiment, well then, the polity seems rather vestigial in all of its limbs.
I say again. The Supreme Court CANNOT nullify Amendments to the Constitution.
If three-quarters of state legislatures decide to do so, they can convene a new Constitutional Convention, throw out the entire existing Constitution, and start over from scratch.
They could rule that it's invalid because it was not legally adopted, but once an amendment is accepted as valid, it's part of the Constitution. The Constitution cannot be unconstitutional, by definition.
The 18th Amendment was a dumb idea, but it was legal. It was proposed by Congress and adopted by the states in the prescribed manner. SCOTUS or any other court had no authority to override it -- the black-letter law was before them, and they were bound by it.