Twenty-First Amendment, Section 2:

This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by conventions in the several States, as provided in the Constitution, within seven years from the date of the submission hereof to the States by the Congress.

The Twenty-First Amendment was proposed by Congress on February 20, 1933, when it passed the House1 , having previously passed the Senate on February 16.2 It appears officially in 47 Stat. 1625. Ratification was completed on December 5, 1933, when the thirty-sixth state (Utah) approved the amendment, there being then forty-eight states in the Union. On December 5, 1933, Acting Secretary of State Phillips certified that it had been adopted by the requisite number of states.3

Footnotes

1

Cong. Rec. (72d Cong., 2d Sess.) 4516.

2

Id. at 4231.

3

48 Stat. 1749.