The Twenty-First Amendment

The Text

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 The eighteenth article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States is hereby repealed.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

What It Says

Prohibition is repealed. Regulation of alcohol returns to the states, and shipping liquor into a state in violation of that state’s law remains barred.

What It Protects Against

Nothing directly. Its significance is procedural: it is the proof that the amendment process runs in both directions and that a constitutional mistake can be undone by the same mechanism that made it.

Protocol Media reading. Not sourced to a ratification-era document.

Problem Addressed

Fourteen years of prohibition had produced organized crime, mass noncompliance, and lost revenue during the Depression. This is also the only amendment ratified by state conventions rather than legislatures.