Red Light Districts.—An ordinance prescribing limits in a city outside of which no woman of lewd character shall dwell does not deprive persons owning or occupying property in or adjacent to said limits of any rights protected by the Constitution.[416]
Sunday Blue Laws.—The Supreme Court has uniformly recognized State laws relating to the observance of Sunday as representing a legitimate exercise of the police power. Thus, a law forbidding the keeping open of barber shops on Sunday is constitutional.[417]
Intoxicating Liquor.—"* * * on account of their well-known noxious qualities and the extraordinary evils shown by experience to be consequent upon their use, a State * * * [is competent] to prohibit [absolutely the] manufacture, gift, purchase, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within its borders * * *."[418] And to implement such prohibition, a State has the power to declare that places where liquor is manufactured or kept shall be deemed common nuisances;[419] and even to subject an innocent owner to the forfeiture of his property for the acts of a wrongdoer.[420]
Regulation of Motor Vehicles and Carriers
The highways of a State are public property, the primary and preferred use of which is for private purposes; their uses for purposes of gain may generally be prohibited by the legislature or conditioned as it sees fit.[421] In limiting the use of its highways for intrastate transportation for hire, a State reasonably may provide that carriers who have furnished adequate, responsible, and continuous service over a given route from a specified date in the past shall be entitled to licenses as a matter of right, but that the licensing of those whose service over the route began later than the date specified shall depend upon public convenience and necessity.[422] To require private contract carriers for hire to obtain a certificate of convenience and necessity, which is not granted if the service of common carriers is impaired thereby, and to fix minimum rates applicable thereto which are not less than those prescribed for common carriers is valid as a means of conserving highways;[423] but any attempt to convert private carriers into common carriers,[424] or to subject them to the burdens and regulations of common carriers, without expressly declaring them to be common carriers, is violative of due process.[425] In the absence of legislation by Congress a State may, in protection of the public safety, deny an interstate motor carrier the use of an already congested highway.[426]
In exercising its authority over its highways, on the other hand, a State is limited not merely to the raising of revenue for maintenance and reconstruction, or to regulations as to the manner in which vehicles shall be operated, but may also prevent the wear and hazards due to excessive size of vehicles and weight of load. Accordingly, a statute limiting to 7,000 pounds the net load permissible for trucks is not unreasonable.[427] No less constitutional is a municipal traffic regulation which forbids the operation in the streets of any advertising vehicle, excepting vehicles displaying business notices or advertisements of the products of the owner and not used mainly for advertising; and such regulation may be validly enforced to prevent an express company from selling advertising space on the outside of its trucks. Inasmuch as it is the judgment of local authorities that such advertising affects public safety by distracting drivers and pedestrians, courts are unable to hold otherwise in the absence of evidence refuting that conclusion.[428]
Any appropriate means adopted to insure compliance and care on the part of licensees and to protect other highway users being consonant with due process, a State may also provide that one, against whom a judgment is rendered for negligent operation and who fails to pay it within a designated time, shall have his license and registration suspended for three years, unless, in the meantime, the judgment is satisfied or discharged.[429] By the same token a nonresident owner who loaned his automobile in another State, by the law of which he was immune from liability for the borrower's negligence, and who was not in the State at the time of an accident, is not subjected to any unconstitutional deprivation by a law thereof, imposing liability on the owner for the negligence of one driving the car with the owner's permission.[430] Compulsory automobile insurance is so plainly valid as to present no federal question.[431]
Succession to Property
When a New York Decedent Estate Law, effective after 1930, grants for the first time to a surviving spouse a right of election to take as in intestacy, and the husband, by executing in 1934 a codicil to his will drafted in 1929, made this provision operative, his widow, notwithstanding her waiver in 1922 of any right in her husband's estate, may avail herself of such right of election. The deceased husband's heirs cannot contend that the impairment of the widow's waiver by subsequent legislation deprived his estate of property without due process of law. Rights of succession to property are of statutory creation. Accordingly, New York could have conditioned any further exercise of testamentary power upon the giving of right of election to the surviving spouse regardless of any waiver however formally executed.[432]