Mugler v. Kansas
| Mugler v. Kansas | |
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| Argued April 11, 1887 Reargued October 11, 1887 Decided December 5, 1887 |
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| Full case name | Peter Mugler v. Kansas; Kansas v. Ziebold & Hagelin |
| Citations | 123 U.S. 623 (more)
8 S. Ct. 273; 31 L. Ed. 205; 1887 U.S. LEXIS 2204
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| Prior history | Defendant, Mugler, convicted for manufacture and sale of intoxicating liquors without a permit. Kansas Supreme Court affirmed conviction. |
| Holding | |
| The regulation and prohibition of alcohol are constitutional exercises of state police power. Conviction affirmed. | |
| Court membership | |
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| Case opinions | |
| Majority | Harlan, joined by Waite, Miller, Bradley, Woods, Matthews, Gray, and Blatchford |
| Concur/dissent | Field |
| Laws applied | |
| U.S. Const. amend. XIV | |
Mugler v. Kansas, 123 U.S. 623 (1887), was an important United States Supreme Court case in which the 8–1 opinion of Associate Justice John Marshall Harlan and the lone partial dissent by Associate Justice Stephen Johnson Field laid the foundation for the Supreme Court's later acceptance and defense during the Lochner era of Justice Field's theory of economic substantive due process under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
The companion case was Kansas v. Ziebold & Hagelin.
As part of the burgeoning temperance movement, the people of Kansas amended their state constitution on November 2, 1880:
The manufacture and sale of intoxicating liquors shall be forever prohibited in this state, except for medical, scientific and mechanical purposes.
The Kansas Legislature subsequently enacted an accompanying statute on February 19, 1881 that provided that after May 1, 1881, any person who manufactured or aided in the manufacture of any liquor without an appropriate permit would be guilty of a misdemeanor. First-time violators were to be fined not less than $100 nor more than $500 or to be imprisoned in the county jail for not less than 20 nor more than 90 days.
On March 7, 1885, the legislature supplemented the statute by providing that all places in which intoxicating liquors were manufactured, sold, bartered, or given away or kept for sale, barter, or use were a nuisance and subject to abatement where a court judged them so. Courts adjudicating nuisance complaints were to sit in equity; also, the statute required the state meet the burden of proving oy that the defendant did not possess a permit, in which case the judge must declare the place complained of a nuisance. Offending owners of nuisances were to be fined not less than $100 nor more than $500 or to be imprisoned in the county jail for not less than 30 nor more than 90 days.
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