## Facts

- Massachusetts statutes required a license to operate as an innholder, victualler, or seller of spirituous liquors, with penalties for unlicensed sales.
- County officials could deny licenses when, in their judgment, the public good did not require them.
- Samuel Thurlow was indicted and convicted in Massachusetts for selling liquor without a license.
- Thurlow argued the licensing restrictions, as applied to liquor that could include imports, conflicted with federal authority over commerce and imports.
- The case was decided with related challenges from other states, collectively known as the License Cases, and the Court issued multiple separate opinions rather than a single majority opinion.

## Issues

1. Whether Massachusetts’s liquor-licensing restrictions were an unconstitutional regulation of commerce or imports reserved to Congress under the Commerce Clause and related federal powers.
2. Whether a state may, under its police power, license, restrict, or effectively prohibit retail liquor sales within the state despite incidental effects on interstate or foreign commerce.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court affirmed the Massachusetts judgment and left Thurlow’s conviction in place.
- A majority of justices concluded the Massachusetts licensing law was not inconsistent with the U.S. Constitution or federal statutes.
- Although no single opinion commanded a majority, overlapping rationales supported state authority to regulate retail liquor traffic as a police measure.
- The Court treated the law as regulating intrastate sale and use after liquor had entered the state’s general mass of property, rather than as a direct regulation of imports or a federal commerce measure.

## Legal Principles

- States retain police power to regulate for public health, safety, and morals, including licensing and restricting the retail sale of intoxicating liquors within their borders.
- State regulation of in-state sale and distribution is generally permissible once goods (including imports) have become part of the general property within the state, rather than remaining in an importer-controlled condition.
- A state law that operates as a general police measure affecting both domestic and imported goods, and does not impose an import duty or directly regulate importation, is not invalid solely because it incidentally affects commerce.
- In the absence of conflicting federal legislation occupying the field, state liquor-licensing regimes may coexist with federal commerce authority.

## Conclusion

The Court upheld Massachusetts’s liquor-licensing regime and affirmed Thurlow’s conviction, recognizing broad state police power over retail alcohol regulation and rejecting the claim that the licensing scheme, as applied to liquor in the state’s general market, was barred by the Commerce Clause or federal import authority.


Thurlow v. Massachusetts, 46 U.S. (5 How.) 504 (1847)