Immoral purpose
Definitions from Case Law · United States Supreme Court
Definitions from Case Law
From 242 U.S. 470 - Caminetti v. United States · 1917Most cited · 5,300 citing opinions
White Slave Traffic Act
It refers to women who, for hire or without hire, offer their bodies to indiscriminate intercourse with men. ... Now the addition in the last statute of the words, 'or for any other immoral purpose,' after the word 'prostitution,' must have been made for some practical object. ... the immoral purpose referred to by the words 'any other immoral purpose' must be one of the same general class or kind as the particular purpose of 'prostitution' specified in the same clause of the statute. ... The prostitute may, in the popular sense, be more degraded in character than the concubine, but the latter none the less must be held to lead an immoral life.
How the Supreme Court has restated “Immoral purpose”
Each Supreme Court definition of “Immoral purpose,” sized by how often later courts cited it. “Change” is measured by wording overlap with earlier definitions — a rough signal, not a semantic judgment.
How often courts cite the cases defining “Immoral purpose”
Court decisions citing the 4 opinions that defined “Immoral purpose” — 6,057 in all, by decade. Counts are citations to the defining cases as a whole, not verified uses of the term. The dip in the most recent years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the latest years.
All 4 definitions, chronological · 1908–1946
- ORIGINAL
In accordance with the familiar rule of ejusdem generis, the immoral purpose referred to by the words 'any other immoral purpose,' must be one of the same general class or kind as the particular purpose of 'prostitution' specified in the same clause of the statute. ... We must assume that, in using the words 'or for any other immoral purposes,' Congress had reference to the views commonly entertained among the people of the United States as to what is moral or immoral in the relations between man and woman in the matter of such intercourse. ... Congress intended by the words 'or for any other immoral purpose,' to include the case of anyone who imported into the United States an alien woman that she might live with him as his concubine.
The principle of ejusdem generis limits the connotation of the words 'any other immoral purpose' to such as are of like character with prostitution
the phrase 'any other immoral purpose' is not restricted to commercialized sexual vice; polygamous practices are within the same genus as prostitution and debauchery covered by the Act, as they have long been outlawed and branded as immoral in the law and have far more pervasive influences in society than casual isolated transgressions
Mann Act · construing 18 U.S.C. § 2421 · White-Slave Traffic Act of 1910 (Mann Act)