Kidd v. Pearson

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Kidd v. Pearson

Argued April 4, 1888
Decided October 22, 1888

Full case name:	J. S. Kidd v. I. E. Pearson

Citations:	128 U.S. 1; 9 S. Ct. 6; 32 L. Ed. 346; 1888 U.S. LEXIS 2193

Prior history:	Error to the Supreme Court of the State of Iowa

Subsequent history:	None

Holding

There is no conflict and the state law is valid. The Court erected a distinction between manufacture and commerce. The state law regulated manufacturing only. The justices feared that a broad view of commerce that would embrace manufacturing would also embrace the power to regulate "every branch of human industry." The distinction proved untenable but it took nearly a half-century to erase its pernicious consequences.

Court membership

Chief Justice: Melville Fuller
Associate Justices: Samuel Freeman Miller, Stephen Johnson Field, Joseph Philo Bradley, John Marshall Harlan, Thomas Stanley Matthews, Horace Gray, Samuel Blatchford, Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar II

Case opinions

Majority by: Lamar
Joined by: Miller, Field, Bradley, Harlan, Matthews, Gray, Blatchford
Fuller took no part in the consideration or decision of the case.

Kidd v. Pearson, 128 U.S. 1 (1888), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that a distinction between manufacturing and commerce meant that an Iowa law which prohibited the manufacture of alcohol (in this case for sale out-of-state) was not unconstitutional in that it did not conflict with the power of the US Congress to regulate interstate commerce.