ANOTHER VICTORY FOR THE COMMERCE CLAUSE: A New York law banning interstate wine sales has been struck down as a burden on interstate commerce. The so called “dormant commerce clause” has also recently been employed to strike down New York laws on tobacco and porn. Here’s some general background.

UPDATE: Professor Brannon Denning writes to correct me, as I omitted the 21st amendment:

Though I like cheap liquor and wine as much as the next person, the NY decision and those like it (e.g., from TX and VA) are wrong, wrong, wrong. The 21st Amendment was intended, in large part, to remove the strictures of the dormant Commerce Clause doctrine from state regulation of liquor imported into their borders. Not only did “drys” want to make sure that Congress didn’t repeal the Webb-Kenyon Act, but “wets,” too, wanted to make sure that fundamentalists didn’t get control of Congress and use the Commerce Clause to re-impose Prohibition.

If your readers are interested in the reasons why, steer them to my “Smokey and the Bandit in Cyberspace” article, still hanging fire at Constitutional Commentary.

I am proud that I have found one issue in which my strongly (and I mean *really* strongly held) personal beliefs point one way, and my research another. So proud, in fact, that I’m going to have another drink before I go to bed.

Brannon’s right about the 21st Amendment — though the governing caselaw is, by his lights, wrong, I believe.