Stay in your state

Here's one for you. The White Slave Traffic Act of 1910 or some crap like that. Basically, this is a statute regarding the transportation of women in interstate commerce for the purpose of prostitution, debauchery, or some other immoral purpose. Interstate commerce in simple terms is a business deal across state borders. In the particular case we discussed in class, some dude had some woman taken to another state for the sole purpose of her becoming his mistress and concubine. To be more blunt, she was to become his sex slave. The facts in the case were already ruled on in a lower court, so the issue here for the Supreme Court was the wording of the statute itself. Is his transportation of this woman for an immoral purpose? It depends on how you define immoral. Was the intent of legislature here to describe immoral as something related to prostitution or debauchery? Is it the courts duty to extend the law based on what legislature intended it to mean? Or should the court base its decision on the specific wording of the statute? After all, making her his mistress isn't stated directly as being immoral. What if it was his wife and he intended to take her to some remote location across the state line to do the dirty-dirty in the Wal-Mart parking lot? Did she consent or does that really matter? What if it was a transvestite? This is just a snippet of what we discussed in class. It's all about teaching us to think like a lawyer.

I'm not going to dwell on the details in this post. Too many questions. Now you know why it takes so friggin' long to brief these stupid cases. But then again you can also see why I think this stuff is more exciting than The Harriest Potter collection. We get to discuss and argue about hookers! No broomsticks or magic carpets here!