Tennessee Wine and Spirits Retailers Assn. v. Thomas

JUSTICE GORSUCH, with whom JUSTICE THOMAS joins, dissenting.¶verify

Alcohol occupies a complicated place in this country’s history. Some of the founders were enthusiasts; Benjamin Franklin thought wine was “proof that God loves us.” Letter from B. Franklin to A. Morellet (July 1779), in 7 Writings of Benjamin Franklin 437 (A. Smyth ed. 1907). Many in the Prohibition era were decidedly less enamored; they saw “liquor [a]s a lawlessness unto itself.” Duckworth v. Arkansas , 314 U. S. 390, 398 (1941) (Jackson, J., concurring in result). Over time, the people have adopted two separate constitutional Amendments to adjust and then readjust alcohol’s role in our society. But through it all, one thing has always held true: States may impose residency requirements on those who seek to sell alcohol within their borders to ensure that retailers comply with local laws and norms. In fact, States have enacted residency requirements for at least 150 years, and the Tennessee law at issue before us has stood since 1939. Today and for the first time, the Court claims to have discovered a duty and power to strike down laws like these as unconstitutional. Respectfully, I do not see it.¶verify

Start with the text of the Constitution. After the Nation’s failed experiment with Prohibition, the people assembled in conventions in each State to adopt the Twentyfirst Amendment. In §1, they repealed the Eighteenth Amendment’s nationwide prohibition on the sale of alcohol. But in §2, they provided that “[t]he transportation or importation into any State . . . for delivery or use therein of intoxicating liquors, in violation of the laws thereof, is hereby prohibited.” The Amendment thus embodied a classically federal compromise: Nationwide prohibition ended, but States gained broad discretion to calibrate alcohol regulations to local preferences. And under the terms of this compromise, Tennessee’s law imposing a two-year residency requirement on those who seek to sell liquor within its jurisdiction would seem perfectly permissible. 1¶verify

Of course, §2 does not immunize state laws from all constitutional claims. Everyone agrees that state laws must still comply with, say, the First Amendment or the Equal Protection Clause. Ante , at 11–12. But the challenge before us isn’t based on any constitutional provision like that. Instead, we are asked to decide whether Tennessee’s residency requirement impermissibly discriminates against out-of-state residents and recent arrivals in violation of the “dormant Commerce Clause” doctrine. And that doctrine is a peculiar one. Unlike most constitutional rights, the dormant Commerce Clause doctrine¶verify

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1 The Court suggests that Tennessee’s residency requirement may fall outside the terms of the Amendment because retailers may not be involved in the “transportation or importation” of liquor into the State. Ante , at 26. But the parties do not dispute that “transportation or importation” into the State is involved here. And understandably so: Unless the liquor stores intend to sell only Tennessee-made liquor (and no one so alleges), it is hard to see how transportation or importation would not be involved.¶verify

cannot be found in the text of any constitutional provision but is (at best) an implication from one. Under its banner, this Court has sometimes asserted the power to strike down state laws that discriminate against nonresidents on the ground that they usurp the authority to regulate interstate commerce that the Constitution assigns in Article I to Congress. But precisely because the Constitution assigns Congress the power to regulate interstate commerce, that body is free to rebut any implication of unconstitutionality that might otherwise arise under the dormant Commerce Clause doctrine by authorizing States to adopt laws favoring in-state residents. Prudential Ins. Co. v. Benjamin , 328 U. S. 408, 434–436 (1946).¶verify

And that’s exactly what happened here. In the WebbKenyon Act of 1913, Congress gave the States wide latitude to restrict the sale of alcohol within their borders. See 37 Stat. 699 (codified at 27 U. S. C. §122). Not only is that law still on the books today, §2 of the Twenty-first Amendment closely “followed the wording of the 1913 Webb-Kenyon Act.” Ante , at 11, n. 5. Accordingly, the people who adopted the Amendment naturally would have understood it to constitutionalize an “exception to the normal operation of the [dormant] Commerce Clause.” Craig v. Boren , 429 U. S. 190, 206 (1976). After all, what Congress can do by statute “surely the people may do . . . through the process of amending our Constitution.” Granholm v. Heald , 544 U. S. 460, 494 (2005) (Stevens, J., dissenting). So in this area, at least, we should not be in the business of imposing our own judge-made “dormant Commerce Clause” limitations on state powers.¶verify

What the relevant constitutional and statutory texts suggest, history confirms. Licensing requirements for the sale of liquor are older than the Nation itself. Byse, Alcoholic Beverage Control Before Repeal, 7 Law & Contemp. Prob. 544, 544–547 (1940). Colonial authorities generally allowed sales only by those who were deemed ''fit and suitable'' and who agreed to post a bond conditioned upon compliance with local regulations. Id. , at 545. States started adopting residency requirements as early as 1834, when New Hampshire began requiring any person who sold liquor “in any quantity less than one gallon” to obtain a license “from the selectmen of the town or place where such person resides.” State v. Adams , 6 N. H. 532, 533 (1834). In 1845, Missouri adopted a law nearly identical to the Tennessee statute now before us, requiring those seeking to sell liquor to have resided in the State for two years. Mo. Rev. Stat. app., p. 1099. In the decades that followed, several other States and Territories followed suit and enacted laws like Tennessee’s. 2¶verify

At the time these residency requirements were adopted they were widely understood to be constitutional, and courts generally upheld them against legal challenges. H. Black, Laws Regulating the Manufacture and Sale of Intoxicating Liquors §30, pp. 39–40, and n. 33 (1892) (collecting cases). Indeed, in the mid-19th century this Court “recognized a broad authority in state governments to regulate the trade of alcoholic beverages within their borders free from implied restrictions under the Commerce Clause.” Craig , 429 U. S., at 205 (citing the License Cases , 5 How. 504, 579 (1847)).¶verify

Things became more contentious only toward the end of the 19th century. By then, this Court had begun to take a more muscular approach to the dormant Commerce Clause and started using that implied doctrine to strike down state laws that restricted the sale of imported liquor. See Bowman v. Chicago & Northwestern R. Co. , 125 U. S.¶verify

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2 See, e.g ., 1859 Neb. Terr. Laws p. 256; Iowa Code §1575 (1860); 1875 Pa. Laws p. 42; N. Y. Rev. Stat. ch. 29, §23 (1896); S. C. Code Ann. §562 (1902); Minn. Stat. §1529 (1905); R. I. Gen. Laws, ch. 123, §2 (1909); 1911 Ala. Acts no. 259; Neb. Rev. Stat. §3844 (1913); Ind. Code §8323(e) (1914).¶verify

465 (1888); Leisy v. Hardin , 135 U. S. 100 (1890). But this judicial activism did not go unnoticed, and in 1890 Congress responded by passing the Wilson Act. Ch. 728, 26 Stat. 313 (codified at 27 U. S. C. §121). That law sought to bolster the authority of States to regulate the distribution of liquor within their borders by providing that liquor shipped into a State would “upon arrival in such State . . . be subject to the operation and effect of the laws of such State . . . to the same extent and in the same manner as though such [liquor] had been produced in such State.”¶verify

Still, the Court did not seem to get the message. A second wave of dormant Commerce Clause attacks on state laws soon followed, and in the process they highlighted some of the Wilson Act’s limitations. In Scott v. Donald , 165 U. S. 58 (1897), the Court addressed South Carolina’s state monopoly system for the sale of liquor, which required state agents to favor domestic products and prohibited consumers from receiving out-of-state shipments for personal use. The Court held that this system unconstitutionally discriminated in favor of domestic products “as against similar products of the other States.” Id. , at 101. Citing the text of the Wilson Act, including the phrase “to the same extent and in the same manner,” the Court emphasized that the Act did not go so far as to authorize States to “discriminate injuriously against products of other States.” Id. , at 100. Then, in Rhodes v. Iowa , 170 U. S. 412 (1898), the Court further curbed the States’ authority to restrict liquor distribution by construing the Wilson Act’s phrase “upon arrival in such State” to mean arrival at the purchaser’s address, rather than arrival within the State’s borders. Id. , at 421, 426; see also Vance v. W. A. Vandercook Co., 170 U. S. 438 (1898).¶verify

Once more, however, Congress stepped in to repudiate this Court’s decisions, this time in unmistakably sweeping language. In the Webb-Kenyon Act of 1913, Congress went so far as to “[take] the protection of interstate commerce away ” from the distribution of liquor within a State’s borders. Clark Distilling Co. v. Western Maryland R. Co. , 242 U. S. 311, 325 (1917) (emphasis added). The language Congress used could not have been plainer: The Act “prohibited” any “shipment or transportation” of alcoholic beverages “into any State” when they are “intended, by any person interested therein, to be received, possessed, sold, or in any manner used . . . in violation of any law of such State.” 27 U. S. C. §122. Within a few years, the Court conceded the Webb-Kenyon Act’s constitutionality, acknowledging along the way that the law was designed to—and did—“prevent the immunity characteristic of interstate commerce from being used to permit the receipt of liquor through such commerce in States contrary to their laws.” Clark Distilling , 242 U. S., at 324. 3¶verify

This history bears special relevance because everyone agrees that, whatever other powers §2 grants the States,¶verify

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3 The Court cites a few pre-Prohibition cases—from one federal district court and two state courts—that, it says, construed Webb-Kenyon to preserve a rule against discrimination. Ante , at 20, n. 12. But these cases offer negligible support. True, two cases construed the Act’s authorization of “any laws” as limited to “valid laws,” a category from which these courts excluded laws discriminating against the products of other States. See Evansville Brewing Assn. v. Excise Comm’n of Jefferson Cty. , Ala. , 225 F. 204, 208 (ND Ala. 1915); Brennen v. Southern Express Co. , 106 S. C. 102, 108–111, 90 S. E. 402, 404 (1916). But there is little reason to think courts would have considered residency requirements for liquor retailers “invalid,” as those laws had generally been upheld prior to Webb-Kenyon. And at least one of the cited cases appears to support the opposite view: “[A]ll commands or prohibitions ancillary and reasonably related to the state’s purpose to promote temperance . . . cannot be thwarted or annulled on any idea that constitutional rights are thereby violated.” Southern Express Co. v. Whittle , 194 Ala. 406, 436, 69 So. 652, 661 (1915). At any rate, a few scattered, thinly reasoned state and district court cases hardly settle anything.¶verify

at a minimum it ''constitutionaliz[ed]'' the similarly worded Webb-Kenyon Act. Ante , at 11, n. 5, 21. Nor can there be much doubt how most everyone understood the terms of the Act and the Amendment that embodied it. Because “centralized regulation did not work,” the Twentyfirst Amendment both ended nationwide prohibition in §1 and authorized local control in §2. Yablon, The Prohibition Hangover: Why We Are Still Feeling the Effects of Prohibition, 13 Va. J. Soc. Pol’y & L. 552, 584 (2006). As a leading study noted at the time, “it was a mistake to regard the United States as a single community in which a uniform policy of liquor control could be enforced.” R. Fosdick & A. Scott, Toward Liquor Control 10 (1933) (Fosdick & Scott). Ours is a vast and diverse Nation, and those who adopted the Amendment believed that what works for one State may not work for another. Consistent with this widespread public understanding of the Amendment’s terms, at least 18 States adopted residency requirements for retailers within the first 15 years after its ratification. 4¶verify

This Court’s initial cases also reflected the same understanding of the Amendment’s effect. Just a few years after ratification, a unanimous Court upheld discriminatory state liquor laws against a dormant Commerce Clause attack, explaining that “to construe the Amendment as saying, in effect: [the State] must let imported liquors compete with the domestic on equal terms . . . would involve not a construction of the Amendment, but a rewrit-¶verify

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4 Granholm v. Heald , 544 U. S. 460, 518, and n. 6 (2005) (THOMAS, J., dissenting) (collecting state statutes); Brief for Petitioner 33–34 (same). See also Note, Economic Localism in State Alcoholic Beverage LawsExperience Under the Twenty-first Amendment, 72 Harv. L. Rev. 1145, 1148–1149, and n. 25 (1959). At least 10 States, including Tennessee, required a fixed period of residency of one year or more. Brief for Petitioner 34 (collecting statutes).¶verify

ing of it.” State Bd. of Equalization of Cal. v. Young’s Market Co. , 299 U. S. 59, 62 (1936). Other early cases reached similar conclusions. See, e.g. , Mahoney v. Joseph Triner Corp. , 304 U. S. 401, 403 (1938) (“[D]iscrimination against imported liquor is permissible”); Indianapolis Brewing Co. v. Liquor Control Comm’n , 305 U. S. 391, 394 (1939) (“Whether the Michigan law should not more properly be described as a protective measure, we have no occasion to consider,” for “whatever its character, the law is valid”). In short, this Court “recognized from the start” that the Twenty-first Amendment allowed the States to regulate alcohol ''unfettered by the Commerce Clause.'' Granholm , 544 U. S., at 517 (THOMAS, J., dissenting). 5¶verify

Straying from the text, state practice, and early precedent, and leaning instead on the Amendment’s famously sparse legislative history, the Court says it can find no evidence that §2 was intended to authorize “protectionist” state laws. Ante , at 21, 22 n. 15. But even there plenty of evidence can be found that those who ratified the Amendment wanted the States to be able to regulate the sale of liquor free of judicial meddling under the dormant Commerce Clause—and there is no evidence they wanted judges to have the power to decide that state laws restricted¶verify

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5 The Court discounts the compelling evidence of postratification practice because, it suggests, States may have been relying on the Court’s expansive interpretation of §2 in State Bd. of Education of Cal. v. Young’s Market , 299 U. S. 59 (1936), rather than their own independent understanding of the Amendment. Ante , at 29. But most of the residency requirements were enacted before that November 1936 decision. Although many of the statutes were codified after Young’s Market , a large majority were enacted earlier. Compare, e.g. , Wyo. Stat. Ann. §53–204 (1945); Idaho Code Ann. §18–130 (1940); R. I. Gen. Laws ch. 163 §4 (1938); N. J. Rev. Stat. §33:1–25 (1937); with 1935 Wy. Sess. Laws ch. 87; 1935 Idaho Sess. Laws ch. 103; 1934 R. I. Laws p. 52; 1933 N. J. Laws p. 1193.¶verify

competition “too much.” 6 After all, both before Prohibition and after repeal, robust competition in the liquor industry was far from universally considered an unalloyed good; lower prices enabled higher consumption and invited social problems along the way. T. Pegram, Battling Demon Rum 94–96 (1998); Fosdick & Scott 43–44, 81. The point of §2 was to allow each State the opportunity to assess for itself the costs and benefits of free trade in alcohol. Reduced competition and increased prices were foreseeable consequences of allowing such unfettered state regulation, but they were consequences the people willingly accepted with the compromise of the Twenty-first Amendment. 7¶verify

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6 See, e.g. , 76 Cong. Rec. 4143 (1933) (statement of Sen. Blaine) (“The purpose of section 2 is to restore to the States by constitutional amendment absolute control in effect over interstate commerce affecting intoxicating liquors”); id ., at 4225 (statement of Sen. Swanson) (“[I]t is left entirely to the States to determine in what manner intoxicating liquors shall be sold or used and to what places such liquors may be transported”); Ratification of the Twenty-first Amendment to the Constitution of the United States: State Convention Records and Laws 50 (E. Brown ed. 1938) (statement of President Robinson of the Connecticut convention) (“[F]undamentally our fight has been . . . for the return to the peoples of the several states of their constitutional right to govern themselves in their internal affairs”); id ., at 174 (statement of Del. Simmons to the Kentucky convention) (“The regulation of the sale of liquor is a state concern”); id ., at 247 (statement of Mme. Chairman Gaylord of the Missouri convention) (“We have never been in favor of a National Regulation to take the place of the 18th Amendment . . . . We believe that each state should work out sane and sensible liquor control measures, responsive to the sentiment of the people of each state”); id ., at 322 (statement of Gov. White of Ohio) (“[T]he control of intoxicating liquors presents a problem of first magnitude,” and “[t]he solution of the problem will be returned to the several states”).¶verify

7 The majority worries that giving full effect to §2 might allow a State to pass a statute restricting licenses to persons whose ancestors have resided in the State for 200 years. Ante , at 22, n. 15. But under parts of the Constitution that §2 left intact, such as the Equal Protection and¶verify

That leaves only our modern precedent to consider—and even here the initial returns support Tennessee. In Hostetter v. Idlewild Bon Voyage Liquor Corp ., 377 U. S. 324 (1964), for example, this Court addressed a New York law that interfered with the federally regulated sale of alcohol to passengers departing from an airport, which the passengers would not receive until they arrived at their “foreign destination.” Id. , at 325. Emphasizing that “ultimate delivery and use” was “in a foreign country,” this Court held that the Twenty-first Amendment did not permit New York to “prevent transactions carried on under the aegis of a law passed by Congress in the exercise of its explicit power under the Constitution to regulate commerce with foreign nations.” Id. , at 333–334. But at the same time, the Court took pains to reassure everyone that the States’ core authority to “restrict, regulate, or prevent the traffic and distribution of intoxicants within [their] borders” remained “unquestioned” and “unconfined” by the dormant Commerce Clause. Id. , at 330; see also Capital Cities Cable , Inc. v. Crisp , 467 U. S. 691, 713 (1984) (describing “the core §2 power” as a State’s authority “directly to regulate the sale or use of liquor within its borders”).¶verify

Consistent with that understanding, this Court in Heublein , Inc. v. South Carolina Tax Comm’n , 409 U. S. 275 (1972), unanimously upheld a South Carolina law permitting producers to transfer liquor to in-state wholesalers only through “resident representative[s].” Id. , at 277. Because the requirement was an “appropriate element in¶verify

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Due Process clauses, any state law must bear a rational relationship to a legitimate state interest. Besides and understandably, the evidence before us suggests that the people who ratified §2 weren’t as concerned with States adopting fanciful laws like the majority’s as they were with eliminating a very real threat—that judges would continue to use the dormant Commerce Clause to meddle with state regulatory authority.¶verify

the State’s system” of regulating the sale of alcohol ''within its borders,'' this Court held that the State could enforce it “ ‘unconfined by traditional Commerce Clause limitations.'' Id. , at 283 (quoting Hotstetter , 377 U. S., at 330). To be sure, in even later cases the Court declined to uphold state laws that, in substantial effect, regulated the sale of alcohol in other states. E.g. , Brown-Forman Distillers Corp. v. New York State Liquor Authority , 476 U. S. 573 (1986); Healy v. Beer Institute , 491 U. S. 324 (1989). But those decisions merely tracked the text of the Twentyfirst Amendment, which grants States the power to regulate liquor only “for delivery or use therein .”¶verify

The truth is, things have begun to shift only in very recent years. Bending to the same impulses that moved it at the beginning of the 20th century, this Court has lately begun flexing its dormant Commerce Clause muscles once more to strike down state laws even in core areas of state authority under §2. So, for example, in Bacchus Imports , Ltd. v. Dias , 468 U. S. 263 (1984), the Court considered Hawaii’s tax exemption for certain liquor products manufactured in-state. As the Court described it, Hawaii’s sole “purpose” in adopting its tax exemption was ''to promote a local industry,'' not “to promote temperance.” Id. , at 276. And a narrow majority considered this fact fatal because the law, in its judgment, did not implicate “any clear concern” of the Amendment—even though the Amendment was adopted to insulate state regulation from judicial charges of unduly interfering with interstate commerce. Ibid.¶verify

Yet, even under as bold a decision as Bacchus , Tennessee’s residency requirement should survive—and easily. A residency requirement may not be the only way to ensure retailers will be amenable to state regulatory oversight, but it is surely one reasonable way of accomplishing that admittedly legitimate goal. 8 Residency also increases the odds that retailers will have a stake in the communities they serve. 9 As Judge Sutton observed in the proceedings below, this same commonsense rationale may explain why Congress requires federal court of appeals judges to live within their circuits, 28 U. S. C. §44(c), and district court judges to live within their districts, §134(b). Byrd v. Tennessee Wine and Spirits Retailers Assn. , 883 F. 3d 608, 633 (2018). Surely, Tennessee cannot be faulted for sharing a similar view. Of course, Tennessee’s residency requirement reduces competition in the liquor market by excluding nonresidents or recent arrivals. But even that effect might serve a legitimate state purpose by increasing the price of alcohol and thus moderating its use, an objective States have always remained free to pursue under the bargain of the Twenty-first Amendment. 10¶verify

To defend its judgment today, the Court is thus left to try to wring support from our 2005 decision in Granholm . Granholm extended Bacchus and its reasoning to strike down on dormant Commerce Clause grounds a state law for disfavoring out-of-state wine producers, holding that¶verify

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8 See Southern Wine & Spirits of Am. , Inc . v. Division of Alcohol and Tobacco Control , 731 F. 3d 799, 811 (CA8 2013) (Colloton, J.); Hinebaugh v. James , 119 W. Va. 162, 164, 192 S. E. 177, 179 (1937); Welsh v. State , 126 Ind. 71, ___, 25 N. E. 883, 885 (1890); Note, 72 Harv. L. Rev., at 1148.¶verify

10 See Brief for U. S. Alcohol Policy Alliance et al. as Amici Curiae 524; Lawson, The Future of The Three-Tiered System as a Control of Marketing Alcoholic Beverages, in Social and Economic Control of Alcohol 32–34 (C. Jurkiewicz & M. Painter eds., 2008); 883 F. 3d, at 634 (opinion of Sutton, J.); cf. 44 Liquormart , Inc . v. Rhode Island , 517 U. S. 484, 504 (1996) (acknowledging a State’s legitimate interest in “reducing alcohol consumption”).¶verify

9 See Byrd v. Tennessee Wine and Spirits Retailers Assn. , 883 F. 3d 608, 633 (2018) (CA6 2018) (Sutton, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part); Southern Wine & Spirits , 731 F. 3d, at 811.¶verify

“Section 2 does not allow States to regulate the direct shipment of wine on terms that discriminate in favor of instate producers .” 544 U. S., at 476 (emphasis added). But even this holding doesn’t spell doom for Tennessee’s retailer residency requirements. As even the Court today acknowledges, “ Granholm repeatedly spoke of discrimination against out-of-state products and producers” and did not refer more generally to discrimination against nonresidents. Ante , at 27. 11¶verify

To claim Granholm ’s support, the majority is thus forced to characterize Granholm ’s framing of the issue before it as purely incidental—the state laws at issue there happened to discriminate against out-of-state products, so the Court just happened to talk a lot about products. As the Court seems to read Granholm , then, it really meant to disapprove any discrimination against out-of-staters. But this badly misreads Granholm . The distinction between producers and other levels of the distribution system was integral to its reasoning and result—in fact, it was precisely how Granholm sought to reconcile its result with the longstanding tradition of state residency requirements. So yes, Granholm held that the Twenty-first Amendment does not protect laws that discriminate against out-ofstate products, but it also expressly reaffirmed the ''unquestionabl[e] legitima[cy]’ ” of state laws that require ''all liquor sold for use in the State [to] be purchased from a licensed in-state wholesaler.'' 544 U. S., at 489 (quoting North Dakota v. United States , 495 U. S. 423, 432 (1990); id. , at 447 (Scalia, J., concurring in judgment)). And I would have thought that restatement of the law more than¶verify

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11 See also Granholm , 544 U. S., at 486 (“States may not give a discriminatory preference to their own producers”); id ., at 484–485 (“The Amendment did not give States the authority to pass nonuniform laws in order to discriminate against out-of-state goods, a privilege they had not enjoyed at any earlier time”).¶verify

Having now effectively abandoned Granholm ’s distinction between products and their distribution and promising to subject both to dormant Commerce Clause scrutiny, it’s hard not to wonder what’s left of Webb-Kenyon and §2. For its part, the Court assures us that it will still allow each State “leeway to enact the measures that its citizens believe are appropriate” to address public health and safety. Ante , at 31 (emphasis added). Yet the Court then proceeds to turn around and dismantle the longstanding judgment of the citizens of Tennessee on just these questions, dismissing them as “protectionist measures with no demonstrable connection” to public health and safety. Ibid. And it promises it will not sustain any state law whose protectionist “effect[s] . . . predomina[te].” Ante , at 32–33.¶verify

What are lower courts supposed to make of this? How much public health and safety benefit must there be to overcome this Court’s worries about protectionism “predominat[ing]”? Does reducing competition in the liquor market, raising prices, and thus reducing demand still count as a public health benefit, as many States have long supposed? And if residency requirements are problematic, what about simple physical presence laws? After all, can’t States “thoroughly investigate applicants” for liquor licenses without requiring them to have a brick-and-mortar store in the State? Ante , at 34. The Court offers lower courts no more guidance than to proclaim delphically that “each variation must be judged based on its own features.” Ante , at 28.¶verify

As judges, we may be sorely tempted to “rationalize” the law and impose our own free-trade rules for all goods and services in interstate commerce. Certainly, that temptation seems to have proven nearly irresistible for this Court when it comes to alcohol. And as Justice Cardozo once observed, “an intellectual passion . . . for symmetry of form and substance” is “an ideal which can never fail to exert some measure of attraction upon the professional experts who make up the lawyer class.” B. Cardozo, The Nature of the Judicial Process 34 (1921). But real life is not always so tidy and satisfactory, and neither are the democratic compromises we are bound to respect as judges. Like it or not, those who adopted the Twenty-first Amendment took the view that reasonable people can disagree about the costs and benefits of free trade in alcohol. They left us with clear instructions that the free-trade rules this Court has devised for “cabbages and candlesticks” should not be applied to alcohol. Carter v. Virginia , 321 U. S. 131, 139 (1944) (Frankfurter, J., concurring). Under the terms of the compromise they hammered out, the regulation of alcohol wasn’t left to the imagination of a committee of nine sitting in Washington, D. C., but to the judgment of the people themselves and their local elected representatives. State governments were supposed to serve as “laborator[ies]” of democracy, New State Ice Co. v. Liebmann , 285 U. S. 262, 311 (1932) (Brandeis, J., dissenting), with “broad power to regulate liquor under §2,” Granholm , 544 U. S., at 493. If the people wish to alter this arrangement, that is their sovereign right. But until then, I would enforce the Twenty-first Amendment as they wrote and originally understood it.¶verify