Borah's Joke

"This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified ... by ... the several States . . . within seven years.

So reads Section 3 of the 18th Amendment to the U. S. Constitution. To the lay mind it may not seem particularly funny, but last week it caused Idaho's Senator William Edgar Borah some great -though very temporary -amusement.

Much reading of the Constitution has made Mr. Borah a solemn man whom the ordinary run of jokes fails to amuse. But this time he had gripped, he thought, a Constitutional jest, the cream of which would taste sour in the mouths of the Wets. All a-chuckle, he was not hesitant in sharing it with the world. Rhode Island had raised a captious question on the 18th Amendment's ratification. Senator Borah judicially pronounced it "utterly unsound" and then continued:

"There is, however, a much stronger point against the validity of the 18th Amendment. That is the seven-year limitation as to ratification. It is clearly contrary to the Constitution. I have never understood why Root and the other lawyers who argued the case in the Supreme Court did not raise this point. . . . But it is too late now for this objection."

A prime joke this would have been, had not other students of Prohibition, perhaps less profound than Senator Borah but with better memories, recalled that on May 16, 1921, the Supreme Court had decided this exact point -and decided it solidly against Senator Borah's present interpretation. In the case of Dillon v. Gloss, Mr. Justice Van Devanter delivered the unanimous opinion of the court:

"We do not find anything in the article that suggests that an amendment, once proposed, is to be open to ratification for all time. ... Of the power of Congress, keeping within reasonable limits, to fix a definite period for the ratification we entertain no doubt."