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Show , TIIE LIQUOR DECISION. The liquor dyi-iiiiini of tho Supreme 1 Court of the State is more important i an a lecal ol academic question than as 1 a practical proposition. II annuls thc , fit v ordinances passed prior to Mav i, 1011. (whon the new liquor statute went into effect.) and makes it impoH niblo to prosoeutc illegal liquor sales under the ordinances passed prior to that time. Wherever any city has passed new ordinances based upon thc law of ll'll. those ordinam-es arc good, liul aJ'thouirh Hie old oulinain'es aiv void so far as criminal prosecnlioiis aro concerned, such prosecutions can bo conducted under the State law just the same. There is no opening tho door to disregard of law under the decision, and there is nothing that Ihe "dry public need be afraid of in it. neither is there anything that the wet public need objcot to. It is simply a question of law. and in so far as. any remedies arc needed, this decision does not do away with them. Since tho prosecutions prosecu-tions aro just as easy under the State law as under a city ordinance, thc rights of thc community arc preserved and the punishment for transgressors is provided. The uuestiou of the validity of the law of 1911 wus not raised in the case, nor touched upon by the court iu its decision. The validity of that law was assumed, since it had uot been attacked. at-tacked. There are a number of provisions provi-sions in that law, however, which teem to be cloarly unconstitutional, such as the reversal in presumptions, as between be-tween wet and dry territoiy, thc position posi-tion of thc district judges with respect to licenses, and a number of other points of doubtful validity. All these points arc yet to be settled. it is quite likely that the law itself would be held to be invalid if thc question ques-tion were directly raised upon it. Certainly, Cer-tainly, it seems clear that the court would modify it very materially, in holding a number of its provisions to be infringements of the constitution. It was an unwise, ill-judged law from first to last; it -was passed as a political politi-cal scheme, unsettling a perfectly satisfactory satis-factory condition so far as the Hquor trade is concerned, as it, existed prior to the passage of this law. The old statutes and thc ordinances' based upon them had beeu fully adjudicated; there was a clear comprehension of their provisions in the public mind, and there was no doubt as to how the provisions of law would apply. All this satisfactory satisfac-tory condition -was overturned by the new statute under the pretense that what was then wanted was to bring about precisely the condition that -we already had. Jt was a fake proposition proposi-tion all the time, and so clcarl' a fake, and thc law itself was so badly drawn, that the court would necessarily bo obliged to invalidate a number of its provisions, perhaps to set aside the law as a whole. " The litigation under this political liquor statute Is only begun. Doubtless iu course of time tho law it-solf it-solf will be squarely attacked, and then we shall see something important come front thc Supreme Court of the State. |