hich prohibited a
licensed manufacturer or wholesaler from importing any brand of
intoxicating liquor containing more than 25% of alcohol by volume and
ready for sale without further processing, unless such brand was
registered in the United States Patent Office. Also validated in
Indianapolis Brewing Co. _v._ Liquor Commission[3] and Finch & Co. _v._
McKittrick[4] were retaliation laws enacted by Michigan and Missouri,
respectively, by the terms of which sales in each of these States of
beer manufactured in a State already discriminating against beer
produced in Michigan or Missouri were rendered unlawful.

Conceding, in State Board of Equalization _v._ Young's Market Co.,[5]
that "prior to the Twenty-first Amendment it would obviously have been
unconstitutional to have imposed any fee for * * * the privilege of
importation * * * even if the State had exacted an equal fee for the
privilege of transporting domestic beer from its place of manufacture to
the [seller's] place of business," the Court proclaimed that this
amendment "abrogated the right to import free, so far as concerns
intoxicating liquors." Inasmuch as the States were viewed as having
acquired therefrom an unconditioned authority to prohibit totally the
importation of intoxicating beverages, it logically followed that any
discriminatory restriction falling short of total exclusion was equally
valid, notwithstanding the absence of any connection between such
restriction and public health, safety or morals. As to the contention
that the unequal treatment of imported beer would contravene the equal
protection clause, the Court succinctly observed that a "classification
recognized by the Twenty-first Amendment cannot be deemed forbidden by
the Fourteenth."[6]

REGULATION OF TRANSPORTATION AND "THROUGH" SHIPMENTS

Lately, however, when passing upon the constitutionality of legislation
regulating the carriage of liquor interstate, a majority of the Justices
have been disposed to by-pass the Twenty-first Amendment and to resolve
the issue exclusively in terms of the commerce clause and State police
power. This trend toward devaluation of the Twenty-first Amendment was
set in motion by Ziffrin, Inc. _v._ Reeves[7] wherein a Kentucky
statute, forbidding the transportation of intoxicating liquors by
carriers other than licensed common carriers, was enforced as to an
Indiana corporation, engaged in delivering liquor obtained from Kentucky
distillers to consignee