Twenty-first Amendment

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Associate Professor of Political Science, Queens University of Charlotte. Coauthor of Misreading the Bill of Rights.

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Twenty-first Amendment, amendment (1933) to the Constitution of the United States that officially repealed federal prohibition, which had been enacted through the Eighteenth Amendment, adopted in 1919.

The temperance movement was a strong force in U.S. politics in the early 20th century, enabling it to win passage of the Eighteenth Amendment. Its influence began to wane, however, in the wake of lax enforcement of prohibition and the emerging illegal economies that quenched the thirst of many American adults. On Feb. 20, 1933, Congress proposed the Twenty-first Amendment, aimed at rescinding prohibition, and in April Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Cullen-Harrison Act, which amended the prohibition-based Volstead Act to permit the manufacturing and sale of low-alcohol beer and wines. Ratification of the amendment was completed on Dec. 5, 1933.

While the public’s attention focuses most often on the end of prohibition, it is important to note that the Twenty-first Amendment also granted states greater leeway in regulating alcohol within and across their borders. Transportation and importation of alcohol could be regulated by the states as long as they did not violate the commerce clause of the Constitution.

The amendment is unique in two ways: (a) it is the only amendment that has specifically repealed another amendment; and (b) it is the only amendment that has used the auxiliary method of ratification via state conventions rather than the legislatures of the states.

The full text of the Amendment is:

Section 1—The eighteenth article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States is hereby repealed.

Section 2—The transportation or importation into any State, Territory, or possession of the United States for delivery or use therein of intoxicating liquors, in violation of the laws thereof, is hereby prohibited.

Section 3—This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by conventions in the several States, as provided in the Constitution, within seven years from the date of the submission hereof to the States by the Congress.