PROHIBITION: The High Seas

The Supreme Court ruled, by vote of 7 to 2, that liquor is legal on U. S. ships outside the three-mile limit. Thus, for the first time since the prohibition amendment went into effect, the highest tribunal in the land has given comfort to the wets.

The outstanding features in the Court’s decision are as follows:

1) The 18th Amendment and the Volstead Act apply only to actual United States territory.

2) The assumption that ” the Constitution follows the flag” is held to be ” a figure of speech and a fiction ” as far as the high seas are concerned.

3) Neither foreign nor American ships may carry liquor within the three-mile limit, whether sealed or not.

4) Rum ships hovering outside American territorial waters are confirmed in their immunity from molestation.

5) Congress may amend the Volstead Law to prohibit liquor on American vessels, but the Court’s decision declared that it had neglected to do so by the terms of the present law.

Transoceanic lines will probably have a Canadian port of call—such as Halifax—in order to load and unload their liquor supplies and thus take full advantage of the new interpretation of the law.

Shipping Board vessels may now legally reopen their bars, but opinion is divided on whether they will take advantage of the law or not.