;[5]
and Panama Canal Zone--June 19, 1934.[6]

Taking judicial notice of the fact that ratification of the Twenty-first
Amendment was consummated on December 5, 1933, the Supreme Court held
that the National Prohibition Act, insofar as it rested upon a grant of
authority to Congress by Amendment XVIII thereupon became inoperative;
with the result that prosecutions for violations of the National
Prohibition Act, including proceedings on appeal, pending on, or begun
after, the date of repeal, had to be dismissed for want of jurisdiction.
Only final judgments of conviction rendered while the National
Prohibition Act was in force remained unaffected.[7] Likewise a heavy
"special excise tax," insofar as it could be construed as part of the
machinery for enforcing the Eighteenth Amendment, was deemed to have
become inapplicable automatically upon the latter's repeal.[8] However,
liability on a bond conditioned upon the return on the day of trial of a
vessel seized for illegal transportation of liquor was held not to have
been extinguished by repeal when the facts disclosed that the trial took
place in 1931 and had resulted in conviction of the crew. The liability
became complete upon occurrence of the breach of the express contractual
condition and a civil action for recovery was viewed as unaffected by
the loss of penal sanctions.[9]

Notes

[1] 41 Stat. 305.

[2] 49 Stat. 872.

[3] 48 Stat. 28, Sec. 12; 48 Stat. 319.

[4] 48 Stat. 361.

[5] 48 Stat. 467.

[6] 48 Stat. 1116.

[7] United States _v._ Chambers, 291 U.S. 217, 222-226 (1934). _See
also_ Ellerbee _v._ Aderhold, 5 F. Supp. 1022 (1934); United States ex
rel. Randall _v._ United States Marshal for Eastern Dist. of New York,
143 F. (2d) 830 (1944).--The Twenty-first Amendment containing "no
saving clause as to prosecutions for offenses theretofore committed,"
these holdings were rendered unavoidable by virtue of the
well-established principle that after "the expiration or repeal of a
law, no penalty can be enforced, nor punishment inflicted, for
violations of the law committed while it was in force * * *"--Yeaton
_v._ United States, 5 Cr. 281, 283 (1809), quoted in United States _v._
Chambers at pages 223-224.

[8] United States _v._ Constantine, 296 U.S. 287 (1935). The Court also
took the position that even if the statute embodying this "tax" had not
been "adopted to penalize [a] violations of the Amendment," but merely
to ordain a penalty for viola