BLS Library Blog

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In this podcast, we hear from Margaret Hanson, Class of 2008, and Editor-in-Chief of the Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial and Commercial Law. Founded in 2005, it is the newest of the student-run journals at BLS and is devoted to business law topics, specializing in corporate, financial and commercial law subjects, including securities and bankruptcy law. Margaret talks about the benefits of working on a scholarly journal and the lessons learned as Editor-in-Chief. She also discusses plans for the upcoming year for the journal with the new Editor-in-Chief, Andrew Kirkpatrick and the new Managing Editor, Paul Schwartz.

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This week, the Student Animal Legal Defense Fund hosted a screening of Earthlings, a 95 minute documentary narrated by Joaquin Phoenix. The film is an in-depth examination of factory farming and mankind’s dependence on animals for food, clothing, entertainment and use in experimentation. Using hidden cameras and other footage, the film chronicles the day-to-day practices of industries that rely on animals for profit – industries such as the leather and fur trades, the sports and entertainment industries and the medical and scientific professions. The film also focuses on animal abuse in pet stores, puppy mills and animal shelters. See the trailer.

In this conversation, Jared Goodman, President of the BLS Student Animal Legal Defense Fund, and SALDF member Kathleen Christatos, Class of 2010, discuss the film and the work they do as the local chapter representing the Animal Legal Defense Fund.

With Gov. Spitzer’s resignation, now might be a good time to look at the federal statute on which the Justice Department based its wiretap investigation of him as we wonder why the federal government prosecuted him in the first place. The Mann Act, officially known as the White Slave Traffic Act, was passed in 1910. Now codified in 18 US Code §2421, it reads:

Whoever knowingly transports any individual in interstate or foreign commerce, or in any Territory or Possession of the United States, with intent that such individual engage in prostitution, or in any sexual activity for which any person can be charged with a criminal offense, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.

A 1986 amendment to the Mann Act substituted the current phrase “engage in prostitution, or in any sexual activity for which any person can be charged with a criminal offense” for earlier language, which prohibited transportation of any “woman or girl” in interstate or foreign commerce for the “purpose of prostitution or debauchery, or for any other immoral purpose”.

Historical events leading to the enactment of the original statute are worth noting. From 1907 to 1914, there was wave of hysteria about “white slavery,” the alleged practice of actually kidnapping young women and forcing them into brothels. The statute, initially passed to implement US adherence to the 1904 International Convention for the Suppression of the White Slave Traffic aimed at the trade in white women in forced sex-for-hire, was a legislative response to an early 20th century “white slavery panic”. Also, prostitution, being an established fact of life in big cities and the subject of intense concern among reformers, was viewed as a threat to public decency and public health due to the sexually transmitted diseases associated with it. Puritans, social reformers, and hygienists all agreed that prostitution was a behavioral problem that needed to be controlled and changed through legislation.

In a series of cases from Hoke v U.S., 227 U.S. 308 (1913) to Caminetti v U.S., 242 U.S. 470 (1917), the US Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the original language of the Mann Act under a view of federalism that expanded federal regulatory power. Since then, the Mann Act has been used to prosecute a number of controversial political and public figures. Among them were the famous black boxer Jack Johnson for his affair with prostitute Lucille Cameron whom he later married, Charlie Chaplin for his involvement with actress Joan Barry and singer Chuck Berry after he invited a 14-year-old Apache waitress whom he met in Mexico to work as a hat check girl at his club.

Whether the Mann Act is a legitimate exercise of federal power or a statute that has been misused by overreaching federal prosecutors is a debate worth having. Useful reading on the topic is David Langum’s Crossing Over the Line: Legislating Morality and the Mann Act, Call # KF9449 .L36 1994 in the BLS Library.

See also Sex, Corruption, Federalism, & the Mann Act posted in yesterday’s PrawfsBlawg.

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Visiting Professor of Law Ann Althouse joins the faculty at Brooklyn Law School this academic year from the University of Wisconsin Law School in Madison, where she has been a Professor of Law since 1984. At BLS, Professor Althouse teaches Constitutional Law and Federal Courts and the Federal System. In today’s conversation, we discuss Prof. Althouse’s popular blog, Althouse, which she has written since 2004, posting photographs and commentary on law, politics, and popular culture. Prof. Althouse also addresses the impact of blogs on the future of legal scholarship citing her 2006 article Why A Narrowly Defined Legal Scholarship Blog Is Not What I Want: An Argument In Pseudo-Blog Form from the issue of the Washington University Law Review on bloggership.

For the past twenty years, Prof. Althouse has made significant contributions to traditional legal scholarship. See a list of her key scholarly works in Wikipedia. She has been a guest columnist for the New York Times. And if you can’t get enough of the divine Ms. Althouse, check out Audible Althouse for a collection of pod casts talking about blogging and other topics.

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One of the newest BLS student organizations, Law Students for Veterans Rights is devoted to representing veterans in the New York City area. Law students offer veterans returning from combat help in resolving problems of inadequate medical care, delays in benefits, treatment and rehabilitation for injuries, homelessness, unemployment, substance abuse, domestic problems and reintegration into civilian life. The organization works with other local public service groups such as Iraq War Veterans, LGBT Veterans of New York City, Congressional Advocacy groups and a clinic of 10 New York City law firms.

Elizabeth Towell, Class of 2009, and Susannah Ashton, Class of 2009, talk about the work of the Law Students for Veterans Rights. They also discuss the film When I Came Home which the group will screen on Wednesday, March 5 at 5pm in Geraldo’s at Feil Hall. The film features homeless American veterans who served in Vietnam and the current war in Iraq and looks at the challenges they face in obtaining veterans’ benefits.

A recent order by the Hon. Jack B. Weinstein, Senior Judge of the Federal District Court in Brooklyn and former Adjunct Professor of Law at BLS, describes the high financial costs of a death penalty case in the federal courts. The order dealt with scheduling and jury selection in the case of a defendant charged with capital murder after he had confessed to a grisly double homicide of two fellow drug dealers. Judge Weinstein, after reciting the substantial judicial effort of the case involving 11 separate rulings, stated:

“To date, more than $769,000 has been spent on defense costs alone in this capital case. It is likely that the prosecution has expended an equal amount. Thus, from its inception until today — before trial has even begun — the insistence of the government on a death sentence has cost over $1.5 million. With 500 or more jurors and an extensive two-phase trial taking months, an additional amount equal to what has already been laid out will probably be required. These sums are typical of those expended in other capital cases in this district… Based on the history of the cases tried in metropolitan New York, the chance of Pepin receiving the death penalty is virtually nil.”

An article in today’s New York Sun describes the U.S. Courthouse in Brooklyn as the hub of death penalty prosecutions in the Northeast where other local federal judges have asked the Justice Department to reconsider decisions to seek the death penalty. The requests to the Justice Depart to review pursuing capital punishment are based on the monetary and manpower costs of holding capital trials rather than opposition to capital punishment. Judge Weinstein’s order shows that the monetary and ideological arguments are interwoven when he states:

“From an analysis of other capital cases brought in the Eastern District of New York…the killing of two colleagues over a drug trafficking disagreement [is] not likely to result in a jury verdict of death. Apparently, the only death penalty judgment imposed in New York federal courts in the last fifty years was one where the defendant deliberately killed, under terrible circumstances, two policemen.”

Source: New York Law Journal, Mark Fass, Judge Urges U.S. to Stop Seeking Death Penalty News Briefs dated March 3, 2008