Indiana Liquor License Laws Unconstitutional

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Apr 4, 1907

Indiana Liquor License Laws Unconstitutional

PROBABLY the most important judicial decision ever handed down upon the liquor question is that recently rendered by Judge Samuel R. Artman, of the Boon County (Indiana) Circuit Court, in which he held that the State liquor license laws were unconstitutional. He found that, measured by common law, the saloon business is unlawful, and therefore without a legal existence. The judge showed from the decision of other courts that the saloon traffic was harmful and a menace to public morality. The Supreme Courts of Kansas, Iowa, Missouri, South Carolina, and Indiana had laid at the doors of the liquor traffic the responsibility for misery, pauperism, and crime. His conclusion from the evidence set forth and the judicial decisions cited, was summed up in these words:—

If the proposition, that any business, the inherent tendency and effect of which is to destroy the public health, the public morals, or the public safety, is immoral and unlawful, is sound, it must follow, as the day follows night, that the business which is the source of a greater amount of crime and misery in every State, than any other cause, is the most immoral and most unlawful business there is in any State.

The liquor element has refused to appeal the case to the Supreme Court, which would indicate that they feared the wide-spread result of such an appeal. However, the temperance forces are determined to force the issue, and three new cases have been started in three different counties. It is planned to begin similar cases in three different States with a view of taking them up to the United States Supreme Court. In view of this possibility, we may expect to see a grand rally of the forces of the liquor power to keep the disreputable business from complete overthrow.