[4] 48 Stat. 361.
[5] 48 Stat. 467.
[6] 48 Stat. 1116.
[7] United States v. Chambers, 291 U.S. 217, 222-226 (1934). See also Ellerbee v. Aderhold, 5 F. Supp. 1022 (1934); United States ex rel. Randall v. United States Marshal for Eastern Dist. of New York, 143 F. (2d) 830 (1944).—The Twenty-first Amendment containing "no saving clause as to prosecutions for offenses theretofore committed," these holdings were rendered unavoidable by virtue of the well-established principle that after "the expiration or repeal of a law, no penalty can be enforced, nor punishment inflicted, for violations of the law committed while it was in force * * *"—Yeaton v. United States, 5 Cr. 281, 283 (1809), quoted in United States v. Chambers at pages 223-224.
[8] United States v. Constantine, 296 U.S. 287 (1935). The Court also took the position that even if the statute embodying this "tax" had not been "adopted to penalize [a] violations of the Amendment," but merely to ordain a penalty for violations of State liquor laws, "it ceased to be enforceable at the date of repeal"; for with the lapse of the unusual enforcement powers contained in the Eighteenth Amendment, Congress could not, without infringing upon powers reserved to the States by the Tenth Amendment, "impose cumulative penalties above and beyond those specified by State law for infractions of * * * [a] State's criminal code by its own citizens." Justice Cardozo, with whom Justices Brandeis and Stone were associated, dissented on the ground that, on its face, the statute levying this "tax" was "an appropriate instrument of * * * fiscal policy * * * Classification by Congress according to the nature of the calling affected by a tax * * * does not cease to be permissible because the line of division between callings to be favored and those to be reproved corresponds with a division between innocence and criminality under the statutes of a state."—Ibid. 294, 296, 297-298. In earlier cases it was nevertheless recognized that Congress also may tax what it forbids and that the basic tax on distilled spirits remained valid and enforceable during as well as after the life of the amendment—See United States v. Yuginovich, 256 U.S. 450, 462 (1921); United States v. Stafoff, 260 U.S. 477 (1923); United States v. Rizzo, 297 U.S. 530 (1936).
[9] United States v. Mack, 295 U.S. 480 (1935).