Legal Document

The 18th and 21st Amendments are pretty obviously legal documents. How can you tell? The fact that they're part of the Constitution. That's your first clue.

Both documents have the boilerplate aspects of Constitutional law, including sections on how to ratify it. You're not going to see that in, say, an impromptu stump speech. Or, if you do, you're listening to an alien in cunning human disguise. Run.

How it Breaks Down

No more drinking.

Section 1 of the 18th Amendment is the money section. This is where the point of the law is enumerated, that there's no buying, selling, transporting, importing, exporting, or manufacturing of liquor. It also leaves the loophole that you can drink all you want if you hoarded it from the get-go.

Congress and the states get to enforce this.

Section 2 of the 18th instructs the feds and the states to work together to make it happen. Laws need sections where they're told how they can be enforced, otherwise they're not.

How it gets ratified.

Section 3 of the 18th is standard Constitutional boilerplate: this needs to be ratified by the states, or it's a whole lot of hot air.

No more Prohibition.

Section 1 of the 21st Amendment is the do-over. The 18th Amendment is no more.

Well, not all the way...

Section 2 of the 21st makes it clear that legalizing liquor doesn't supersede local law. That is, if a state or county or whatever is legally dry, it can still be dry.

This looks familiar.

Section 3 of the 21st is basically the same as section 3 of the 18th. It's that boilerplate thing.