Wynehamer v. the People

The Wynehamer case was straight-forward. In July of 1855, James Wynehamer, a Buffalo bar owner, was arrested and indicted for selling intoxicating liquors in violation of the new statute. Although the accused protested that he was being denied his constitutional right to be tried by a jury of his peers, the trial took place in the court of special sessions, with a six-person jury. Wynehamer pleaded not guilty. His counsel argued that the statute under which he had been indicted was unconstitutional. Since Wynehamer had legally purchased his liquors before the enactment of the statute, he was being denied his right to dispose of his property as he saw fit. The court of special sessions disagreed and found the defendant guilty. He was fined fifty dollars and forced to remain interred until the fine was paid. Wynehamer appealed the judgment, which was then upheld by the Supreme Court of the Eighth District. The case was then reviewed by the court of appeals.

The court of appeals reversed the judgments of the two lower courts with a vote of five to three, determining that the prohibition act violated "the provision of the state constitution which declares that no person shall be deprived of life, liberty or property, without due process of law." In order to do so, the court first had to establish that intoxicating liquors were indeed property, a principle which Justice George M. Comstock deemed uncontroversial in his groundbreaking opinion. Although it was true, Comstock admitted, that "intoxicating drinks are a species of property which performs no beneficent part in the political, moral, or social economy of the world," that fact did not diminish their status as property. If arguments about its moral value were allowed to subvert the idea of property, he asserted, "then there is no private right entirely safe," and "the guarantees of the constitution are a mere waste of words."

The court's final decision was tantamount to a declaration that a natural or higher law protected private property. Comstock referred to a passage in William Blackstone's Commentaries in which the author declares that the importance accorded the rights of property outweighs even the public good. Theories of the public good may be supported by large numbers of people, declared Comstock, but "there are some absolute private rights beyond their reach." Without taking on the issue of whether temperance idealists were right or wrong about the pernicious effects of alcohol, Comstock dismissed their attempt at prohibition as unconstitutional.

Dissenting judges argued that the legislature had the right to regulate, restrict, or even prohibit traffic in property for the sake of preventing injury and protecting the community. If the right of traffic or transmission of property was considered an inalienable right, wrote Judge T. A. Johnson, then "the right to property and its transmission would be held superior to the right to life and liberty." Two other judges joined Johnson in dissenting, but the majority was not convinced.

In striking down a prohibition statute with higher-law principles, the New York Court of Appeals contributed to the growing practice of higher-law jurisprudence in the nineteenth century. It also established the legal environment in which a successful enactment of prohibition could occur by constitutional amendment. The New York court was in keeping with the nation's focus on property rights in the antebellum era, a focus that would take on very political overtones in the years leading up to the Civil War. It also foreshadowed the U.S. Supreme Court's struggle with issues of due process, a process that began in the 1850s and continued until the final decades of the nineteenth century.