Mugler v. Kansas, 123 U.S. 623 (1887), argued 11 Oct. 1887, decided 5 Dec. 1887 by vote of 8 to 1; Harlan for the Court, Field concurring in part and dissenting in part. Mugler v. Kansas was an important step toward the Court's acceptance of economic due process under the Fourteenth Amendment. Peter Mugler continued manufacturing beer after the Kansas legislature, pursuant to a new provision of the state constitution, enacted a prohibition law, forbidding the manufacture or sale of liquor without a license. For violating the statute the state fined and imprisoned Mugler and seized his brewery and inventory of beer. On appeal to the Supreme Court, Mugler denied that the police power was so broad as to prohibit the manufacture of beer for Mugler's private consumption or for sale outside Kansas. The state law, therefore, deprived Mugler of property without due process. Kansas officials, however, defended their actions against Mugler as a valid exercise of the police power to regulate health and morals.

Under the state's police power the Supreme Court upheld the prohibition statute. Justice John Marshall Harlan held, however, that courts may scrutinize the purpose behind state regulations in order to determine whether the regulation had any real relationship to health, safety, or morals under the police power. Justice Stephen Field's dissent argued that the seizure of the property and prohibition of beer manufactured for export were violations of the due process clause. Taken together Justice Harlan's opinion and Field's dissent helped to lay the foundation for the Court's acceptance of Field's broader property rights theory after 1890.

See also Due Process, Substantive.

Tony Freyer

MUGLER V. KANSAS

MUGLER V. KANSAS, 123 U.S. 623 (1887). Kansas had passed an act in 1881 that forbade the manufacture and sale, except for medicinal purposes, of all intoxicating liquors. Convicted under this act, Mugler argued that since he had invested his money in a brewing business incorporated under the authority of the state government, he could not be denied the right to continue the operation of his business. The Supreme Court refused to accept this position. Because of its relevance to "the public health, the public morals, and the public safety," the Kansas law met the Court's standard that a regulation passed under a state's police power bears a substantial relation to the public welfare it claims to protect.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Roettinger, Ruth Locke. The Supreme Court and State Police Power: A Study in Federalism. Washington, D.C.: Public Affairs Press, 1957.

W. BrookeGraves

Andrew C.Rieser

See alsoEpidemics and Public Health ; Prohibition .