Commonwealth v. Kimball
Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court
This was an indictment founded on Revised Stat. c. 47, § 3, for selling spirituous liquors by retail without a license. ■ At the trial, in the Common Pleas, before Cummins J., the jury were instructed, that that section was not repugnant to, nor inconsistent with, the constitution or any of the statutes of the United States. The defendant, being convicted, excepted to this instruction.
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This was an indictment founded on Revised Stat. c. 47, § 3, for selling spirituous liquors by retail without a license. ■ At the trial, in the Common Pleas, before Cummins J., the jury were instructed, that that section was not repugnant to, nor inconsistent with, the constitution or any of the statutes of the United States. The defendant, being convicted, excepted to this instruction. The Revised Statutes provide, in c. 47, § 3, that “no person shall presume to be a retailer or seller of wine, brandy, rum, or other spirituous liquors, in a less quantity than twenty-eight gallons, &c. unless…
1Opinion of the Court
Shaw C. J.
afterward drew up the opinion of the Court. The only exception taken to this conviction, and to the instructions of the judge, in point of law, is, that the law of this Commonwealth, prohibiting any person from selling wine, brandy, rum or other spirituous liquors by retail without license, is repugnant to the constitution and laws of the United States, and consequently inoperative and void.
It has already been remarked in another of this class of cases, argued at the present term, that in considering the constitution and laws of the United States and those of the several States, and…
2Cases cited1 opinion
- Brown v. MarylandSupreme Court of the United States · 1827
3Cited by2 opinions
- McWilliams v. Central Trust Co.Ohio Court of Appeals · 1935
- Alberts v. Town of DanforthIllinois Supreme Court · 1917