Pathfinder for Research of Alcohol Laws
in the United States

Compiled by Colette LaFond, J.D.

Under the 21st Amendment of the United States Constitution, which ended the nation's experiment with prohibition, alcohol is treated differently from all other commodities bought and sold in the United States.

While the federal government generally retains some authority over the production of alcoholic beverages, the individual states exercise primary legal authority over access to and sale of these beverages. As a result, each state has established its own particular system of control over alcohol that differs from its neighbors.

Therefore research into most of the law relating to alcoholic beverages in the United States is necessarily state specific and can be rather confusing. This guide is intended to provide access to tools that can make research into alcohol law less confusing and more efficient.

Note: This infomation is not intended to constitute legal advice. The reader should obtain advice from an attorney licensed by the state having jurisdiction over the matter as to which legal advice is needed. 

I. PRIMARY SOURCES

A. THE CONSTITUTIONAL BASIS

1. Finding Constitutional Law

B. STATE/LOCAL ALCOHOL LAW

1. State law about alcoholic beverages generally

2. State Statutes

3. Finding State Administrative Materials

4. Finding State Case Law

5. Local Law

C. FINDING FEDERAL ALCOHOL LAW

1. Finding Federal Statutes

2. Finding Federal Rules and Regulations

3. Finding Cases

II. SECONDARY SOURCES

A. LEGAL AND GOVERNMENTAL SECONDARY RESOURCES

1.Background information

2. Research Guides, Bibliographies and Indexes

3. State Specific Research Guides

4. Digests

5. Periodicals

6. Newsletters

7. Looseleaf services

8. Practitioner-related sources

9. Legal Treatises

10. Legal Directories

11. Statistical Resources

B. INTERDISCIPLINARY & NON-LEGAL RESOURCES

1. Directories

2. Periodicals

3. Reports and Articles

Scope

This guide is designed to be used for research into governmental control over alcoholic beverages in the United States. Legal issues addressed by these materials may include:

• the authority of the federal government to control alcohol traffic between and within the states;

• the authority of individual states to control alcohol traffic into and within its boundaries through licensing or direct government control over the sale of alcohol;

• the authority of a locality to further restrict or prohibit the sale of alcohol;

• the authority of governmental units to tax alcohol traffic; and

• the liability attaching to servers of alcoholic beverages for harm resulting from that service.

This guide is written for non-attorney researchers as well as attorneys doing research in these areas.

Organization

This guide is organized by type of research material.

It is first broken down into two major sections,

1. primary sources and
2. secondary resources .

The primary sources section is placed first, since it provides direct guidance to the authoritative sources of alcohol law in the United States. The primary sources section is then further broken down into three parts: constitutional primary materials , state materials and federal materials - an order that roughly corresponds to their relative importance to researching most issues of alcohol law.

Each of these parts provide specific instruction to finding primary law when the researcher has a specific starting point (such as a general subject or a citation) or has a particular purpose.

The secondary materials are also arranged to roughly correspond to their relative importance to the research process. The secondary materials section is divided into two sections: Legal and Governmental Resources, and Interdisciplinary Resources.

Within each section, the materials are arranged in order of general utility for research into alcohol law. However, depending on the specific area of alcohol law, the order of materials as presented may or may not be particularly apt.

Therefore, a researcher using this guide should look over all the parts within a given section before deciding what sources to consult.

Throughout this guide resources pertaining to Minnesota law are identified and included in their own subsections. This guide presents them this way partly for research specifically into Minnesota alcohol law, but also for exemplary purposes. Many states have similar resources to Minnesota's, so it is worth seeking comparable materials for other states when a specific Minnesota resource is mentioned.

Throughout this guide, discussion of on-line resources appear in color boxes. This is to quickly distinguish these resources, since for many researchers on-line research is much more accessible and may be the most viable resource.

Finally, this guide is not intended to be an exhaustive list of all resources available on alcohol law. It includes what appears to be the most useful resources available in each resource area at this time. Hopefully, however, this guide will provide enough starting points for productive research into alcohol law.

Table of Contents

Scope

Organization