The Hill first published this opinion piece.

Novelist William Faulkner reportedly observed, “Civilization begins with distillation.” 
 
Yet how civilized is any society that criminalizes the American-as-apple-pie hobby of home-distilling, a proud tradition carried on by our first president long predating our great nation? You may be surprised to learn that producing even a single ounce of spirited beverage at home for your own personal consumption constitutes a felony. 
 
How can that be? 
 
Your cousin brews mediocre beer in his garage. Your neighbor makes even less palatable wine in her basement. Your college buddy has a jerry-rigged moonshine setup in his backyard shed. The beer and wine? Fully legal, irrespective of their quality. The moonshine, however, could land your friend in prison, and result in $10,000 in fines and/or seizure of his family’s home — even if it is the good stuff that he keeps as a point of pride for himself. 
 
The federal law prohibiting home distilling is un-American in both its spirit and letter. It is also unconstitutional, as the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit recently ruled on a case filed by my organization, The Buckeye Institute, challenging the 158-year-old ban. 
 
Congress remains — despite its frequent objections — a body of limited, enumerated powers. Judge Edith Jones, who wrote the blockbuster opinion for the Fifth Circuit, found that Congress cannot regulate home distilling under its taxation power or the Necessary and Proper Clause. By contrast, in a companion case decided 11 days later, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit upheld that very same federal prohibition on home distilling based upon the very same taxation power and Necessary and Proper Clause. 
 
When federal appellate courts reach opposing conclusions, known as a circuit split, the odds exponentially increase for the U.S. Supreme Court to grant review and clear up the confusion. Likewise, when a federal statute is struck down in whole or in part, the Supreme Court is even more likely to hear the case. In The Buckeye Institute’s two cases, we have a perfect storm where both of those scenarios have occurred. 
 
If the taxing power supplemented by the Necessary and Proper Clause were the only issue in contention, we would already have quite a sexy Supreme Court case. To dress it up even further, plaintiff John Ream astutely argued in his Sixth Circuit filings that the federal ban on at-home alcohol distillation for personal consumption also exceeds Congress’s Article I power to regulate interstate commerce because the activity in dispute is neither commerce nor interstate. 
 
Since the Supreme Court’s misguided 1942 decision in Wickard v. Filburn, which found that Congress could regulate wheat even if said grains never left their originating farm, far too much mischief has been committed in the name of regulating interstate commerce that isn’t either one of those things. 
 
Indeed, for more than 50 years, the prevailing view was that there was no limit on Congress’s power under the Commerce Clause — that is, until the federalism revolution of the 1990s when the Supreme Court began enforcing outer limits to Congress’s authority, wherein the regulated class of activities — e.g., carrying a firearm in a school zone — is not regulable as interstate commerce. 
 
But this revolution stalled after the Supreme Court issued its 2005 decision in Gonzales v. Raich, in which the court upheld the federal regulation on the production and use of homegrown medical marijuana as necessary and proper to the comprehensive national scheme of narcotics regulation. 
 
In these two compelling home-distilling challenges, we enjoy a brand-new opportunity for the Supreme Court to check congressional authority under the Commerce Clause, while applying proper limits under the taxing and Necessary and Proper Clauses to boot — something we should all toast together. 
 
Faulkner also purportedly quipped that “There is no such thing as bad whiskey. Some whiskies just happen to be better than others.” Although that insight may or may not be true of distilled spirits, there is such a thing as bad law. And the unconstitutional, un-American and freedom-stifling federal ban on home distilling is among the worst, but it nonetheless creates a tremendous opportunity to distill properly limited government. 
 
Robert Alt is president and chief executive officer of The Buckeye Institute, and an attorney representing the would-be home distillers who serve as plaintiffs in McNutt v. U.S. Department of Justice and Ream v. U.S. Department of Treasury, respectively.