Crossing Over the Line: Legislating Morality and the Mann ACT

Once a leading pop culture touchstone, the Mann Act has gone the way of the hi-fi and bakelite. In a way that's too bad, because as this terrific work of legal and social history shows, the Act was a sad chapter in the history of American efforts to legislate private behavior. Langum provides a thorough account of the Mann Act's history. Highlights include the more well-known defendants, like Charlie Chaplin and Humbert Humbert. The analysis is at once concise and evocative--his description of the hazards of "affirmative discretion" gave me a new handle on Ken Starr. The narrative sometimes gets bogged down in all the cases, but my only real complaint is that he didn't find space to namecheck PDQ Bach and his immoral porpoises.