Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dk4vv Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-28T01:51:35.281Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Investigation into the Traffic in Women by the League of Nations: Sociological Jurisprudence as an International Social Project

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 December 2015

Paul Knepper
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

During the interwar period, the League of Nations led an international campaign against traffic in women. Although important research about the League's work has started to appear, historians have concentrated on the “white slave trade” in the decades before the First World War. From 1924 to 1926, the League conducted the first intercontinental study to determine the number of women caught up in the traffic, and to map the strategies and routes used by traffickers. Undercover investigators visited more than 100 cities across Europe, the Mediterranean, and the Americas. The investigators talked to thousands of prostitutes, pimps, brothel-keepers, and others engaged in the sex trade. The “worldwide” investigation was not only the most significant aspect of the antitrafficking campaign in the interwar years, but also of the League's effort to build an international legal regime on a foundation of sociological jurisprudence.

Type
Articles
Information
Law and History Review , Volume 34 , Issue 1 , February 2016 , pp. 45 - 73
Copyright
Copyright © the American Society for Legal History, Inc. 2015 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1. Leppänen, Katarina, “Movement of Women: Trafficking in the Interwar Era,” Women's Studies International Forum 30 (2007): 523–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gorman, Daniel, “Empire, Internationalism, and the Campaign against the Traffic in Women and Children in the 1920s,” Twentieth Century British History 19 (2008): 186–216CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Stephanie Limoncelli, The Politics of Trafficking: The First International Movement to Combat the Sexual Exploitation of Women (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010); Pliley, Jessica, “Claims to Protection: The Rise and Fall of Feminist Abolitionism in the League of Nations' Committee on the Traffic in Women and Children,” Journal of Women's History 22 (2010): 90–115CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; and García, Magaly Rodríguez, “The League of Nations and the Moral Recruitment of Women,” International Review of Social History 57 (2012): 97–128CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2. Judith Walkowitz, City of Dreadful Delight: Narratives of Sexual Danger in Late Victorian London (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992); Donna J. Guy, Sex and Danger: Prostitution, Family, and Nation in Argentina (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1990); Dalley, Bronwyn, “'Fresh Attractions': White Slavery and Feminism in New Zealand 1885–1918,” Women's History Review 9 (2000): 585–606CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Levine, Philippa, “The White Slave Trade and the British Empire,” Criminal Justice History 17 (2002): 133–46Google Scholar; De Vries, Petra, ”White Slaves: in a Colonial Nation: The Dutch Campaign Against the Traffic in Women in the Early Nineteenth Century,” Social and Legal Studies 14 (2005): 39–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Brian Donovan, White Slave Crusades: Race, Gender and Anti-Vice Activism (Champaign-Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2006); Gretchen Soderlund, Sex Trafficking, Scandal, and the Transformation of Journalism, 1885–1917 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013); Jessica Pliley, Policing Sexuality: The Mann Act and the Making of the FBI (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2014); James H. Adams, Urban Reform and Sexual Vice in Progressive-Era Philadelphia: The Faithful and the Fallen (London: Lexington Books, 2015); and Rachael Attwood, “Stopping the Traffic: The National Vigilance Association and the International Fight against the ‘White Slave’ Trade (1899–c.1909),” Women's History Review 24 (2015): 325–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3. David Wigdor, Roscoe Pound: Philosopher of Law (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1974); Edward McLean, Law and Civilization: The Legal Thought of Roscoe Pound (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1992); N.E.H. Hull, Roscoe Pound and Karl Llewellyn: Searching for an American Jurisprudence (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997); and Lasser, Mitchel, “Comparative Readings of Roscoe Pound's Jurisprudence,” American Journal of Comparative Law 50 (2002): 719–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4. James M. Kelly, A Short History of Western Legal Theory (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992); Neil Duxbury, Patterns of American Jurisprudence (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995); Gary Minda, Postmodern Legal Movements: Law and Jurisprudence at Century's End (New York: New York University Press, 1995); Wayne Morrison, Jurisprudence: From the Greeks to Postmodernism (London: Cavendish, 1997); Stephen Feldman, American Legal Thought from Modernism to Postmodernism: An Intellectual Voyage (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000); Dragan Milovanovic, An Introduction to the Sociology of Law (Monsey, NY: Criminal Justice Press, 2003); Mathieu Deflem, Sociology of Law: Visions of a Scholarly Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008); Dennis Patterson, ed., A Companion to Philosophy of Law and Legal Theory (Oxford: Wiley–Blackwell, 2010); and Scott Veitch, Emilios Christodoulidis, and Lindsay Farmer, Jurisprudence: Themes and Concepts (London: Routledge, 2012).

5. Certainly, Pound was his own worst enemy in this regard. Although he called for a new “sociological legal history” to show how the law was linked to the economic and social history of the time, he did not pursue it. Instead, Pound persisted in writing a philosophical history in which he announced that sociological jurisprudence was the emerging theoretical framework in a grand pageant of legal thought. Pound, Roscoe, “The Scope and Purpose of Sociological Jurisprudence III” Harvard Law Review 25 (1912): 514–15CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6. Historians have tended to see sociological jurisprudence as an American movement with particular relevance to urban reform. Michael Willrich, City of Courts: Socializing Justice in Progressive Era Chicago (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003); Batlan, Felice J., “Law and the Fabric of the Everyday: Settlement Houses, Sociological Jurisprudence, and the Gendering of Urban Legal Culture,” Southern California Interdisciplinary Law Journal 15 (2005–2006): 235–84Google Scholar; and Joseph F. Spillane and David B. Wolcott, A History of Modern American Criminal Justice (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2013). Discussion about Pound in relation to international law is underway; however, it adheres to the “legal theory in books” approach. Astorino, Samuel J., “The Impact of Sociological Jurisprudence on International Law in the Inter-War Period: The American Experience,” Dusquene Law Review 34 (1995–1996): 277–98Google Scholar; and Martti Koskenniemi, The Gentle Civilizer of Nations: The Rise and Fall of International Law, 1870–1960 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).

7. Mark Connelly, The Response to Prostitution in the Progressive Era (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1980); Keire, Mara, “The ‘Vice Trust’: A Reinterpretation of the White Slave Scare in the United States, 1907–1917,” Journal of Social History 25 (2001): 5–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mara Keire, For Business and Pleasure: Red-Light Districts and the Regulation of Vice in the United States, 1890–1933 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010); Hennigan, Peter C., “Property War: Prostitution, Red-Light Districts, and the Transformation of Public Nuisance Law in the Progressive Era,” Yale Journal of Law and Humanities 16 (2004): 123–98Google Scholar; and Donovan, Brian and Barnes-Brus, Tori, “Narratives of Sexual Consent and Coercion: Forced Prostitution Trials in Progressive New York City,” Law and Social Inquiry 3 (2011): 597–619CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8. Turner, George K, “The Daughters of the Poor” McClure's Magazine 34 (1909): 45–61Google Scholar.

9. “The Court's Charge to the Grand Jury,” New York, January 3, 1910, 1. Rockefeller Archives (RG 2, Series 0, Box 8, Folder 56).

10. John D. Rockefeller, Jr. “Statement to Judge O'Sullivan” May 11, 1910, 2. Rockefeller Archives (RG 2, Series 0, Box 8, Folder 56).

11. John D Rockefeller Jr. to Charles O Whitman, March 4, 1910, 1–2. Rockefeller Archives (RG 2, Series 0, Box 8, Folder 56).

12. “Memorandum” (no date). Rockefeller Archives (RG 2, Series 0, Box 8, Folder 56).

13. “Presentment in the matter of the Investigation as to the Alleged Existence in the County of New York of an Organized Traffic in Women for Immoral Purposes,” January 1910, 2. Rockefeller Archives (RG 2, Series 0, Box 8, Folder 56).

14. Ibid., 3.

15. Ibid., 6.

16. Michael McGerr, A Fierce Discontent: The Rise and Fall of the Progressive Movement (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003).

17. Hovenkamp, Herbert, “The Mind and Heart of Progressive Legal Thought,” Iowa Law Review 81 (1995): 149–160Google Scholar; Sanders, Elizabeth, “Rediscovering the Progressive Era,” Ohio State Law Journal 72 (2011): 1281–94Google Scholar; and Ely, James W., “The Progressive Era Assault on Individualism and Property Rights,” Social Philosophy and Policy 29 (2012): 255–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18. Willrich, City of Courts, xxxviii.

19. John D. Rockefeller Jr. to Frederick T. Gates, Nov 2, 1910, 4–5. Rockefeller Archives (RG2, Series 0, Box 8, Folder 56). At first, Rockefeller urged the mayor to set up a commission to be led by an investigator, probably a lawyer, who would make an investigation into prostitution in the largest cities in the United States and Europe. The commissioners would pursue a “practical, fearless and far-reaching” project to curtail prostitution and establishing proper standards of sexual conduct, realizing that this would require several generations to achieve. They would coordinate the efforts of private and public authorities to collectively implement a shared and coherent administration and legislative agenda.

20. “The Origin, Work and Plans of the Bureau of Social Hygiene,” January 27, 1913. Rockefeller Archives (Series 1, Box 2, Folder 25). The publicity surrounding Rockefeller's grand jury report, as well as the political wrangling over its findings, convinced him to rely on private efforts instead of relying on the mayor's office. A private organization would continue, generation after generation, in the fight against the social evil, unaffected by elections, campaigns, and political careers.

21. First Annual Report 1913–1914 (New York: American Social Hygiene Association, 1914). Social Welfare History Archives, Elmer Andersen Library, University of Minnesota (Box 170). For further detail about the activities of the American Social Hygiene Association, see Alan Brandt, No Magic Bullet: A Social History of Venereal Disease in the United States Since 1880 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987); David J. Pivar, Purity an Hygiene: Women, Prostitution and the “American Plan”, 1900–1930 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2002); Jennifer Fronc, New York Undercover: Private Surveillance in the Progressive Era (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009); and Robertson, Stephen, “Harlem Undercover: Vice Investigators, Race and Prostitution,” Journal of Urban History 35 (2009): 486–504CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

22. Wigmore, John H., “Roscoe Pound's St. Paul Address of 1906: The Spark that Kindled the White Flame of Progress,” Journal of the American Judicature Society 20 (1937): 176–78Google Scholar.

23. Pound, Roscoe, “The Need of a Sociological Jurisprudence,” Green Bag 19 (1907): 607–15Google Scholar; Pound, Roscoe, “The Scope and Purpose of a Sociological Jurisprudence I,” Harvard Law Review 24 (1911): 541–619CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Pound, Roscoe, “The Scope and Purpose of a Sociological Jurisprudence II,” Harvard Law Review 25 (1911): 140–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Pound, Roscoe, “The Scope and Purpose of a Sociological Jurisprudence III,” Harvard Law Review 25 (1912): 489–516CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In the Storrs lectures given at Yale University in 1921–22, Pound surveyed the sociological concepts he had brought to his study of law. Law represented a “social institution to satisfy social wants,” through “social control” and “securing social interests,” or, as he put it: “in short, a continually more efficacious social engineering.” Roscoe Pound, An Introduction to the Philosophy of Law (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1922) 47.

24. Geis, Gilbert, “Sociology and Sociological Jurisprudence: Admixture of Lore and Law,” Kentucky Law Journal 52 (1963–64): 267–93Google Scholar; Rumble, Wilfred E., “Legal Reform, Sociological Jurisprudence and Mr Justice Holmes,” Journal of the History of Ideas 26 (1965): 547–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Alan Hunt, The Sociological Movement in Law (London: Macmillan, 1978).

25. Pound, Roscoe, “Philosophy of Law and Comparative Law,” University of Pennsylvania Law Review 100 (1951): 17CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See, further, Trevino, A. Javier, “The Influence of Sociology on American Jurisprudence: From Oliver Wendell Holmes to Critical Legal Studies,” Mid–American Review of Sociology 18 (1994): 23–46Google Scholar.

26. The Conference created the language of trafficking. The Final Act replaced the language “white slave trade” with “traffic in women.” See Magaly Rodríguez Garcia's comparison of the language used by League investigators with that of the people they investigated. Members of the Advisory Committee and the Special Body of Experts constructed “traffic in women” out of ambiguous terms used by persons involved in the sex trade. Rodríguez Garcia, “The League of Nations,” 99–100.

27. Pedersen, Susan, “Back to the League of Nations,” American Historical Review (2007): 1091–117CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For Crowdy's institutional entrepreneurship, see Daniel Gorman, The Emergence of International Society in the 1920s (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 52–81.

28. Koskenniemi, The Gentle Civilizer of Nations, 2002; Kolb, Robert, “Politis and Sociological Jurisprudence of Inter-War International Law,” European Journal of International Law 23 (2012): 233–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Likhovski, Assaf, “Czernowitz, Lincoln, Jerusalem, and the Comparative History of American Jurisprudence,” Theoretical Inquiries in Law 4 (2003): 621–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

29. Lela B. Costin, Two Sisters for Social Justice: A Biography of Grace and Edith Abbott (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1983).

30. Costin, Two Sisters, 19.

31. Hull, N.E.H., “Networks and Briccolage: A Prolegmenon to a History of Twentieth-Century American Academic Jurisprudence,” American Journal of Legal History 35 (1991): 307–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

32. Grace Abbott, “Recommendations submitted as a possible subject for discussion by the Committee on Traffic in Women and Children,” Edith and Grace Abbott Papers, Regenstein Library, University of Chicago (Box 61). In his 1908 critique of the philosophical understanding of law, Pound said that American legislation had failed because it had “not been the product of preliminary study for the conditions to which it was to apply.” Pound, Roscoe, “Mechanical Jurisprudence,” Columbia Law Review 8 (1908): 613CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

33. Grace Abbott to Raymond Fosdick, May 31, 1923. Edith and Grace Abbott Papers, Regenstein Library, University of Chicago (Box 61).

34. Grace Abbott to Raymond Fosdick, January 8, 1924. Edith and Grace Abbott Papers, Regenstein Library, University of Chicago (Box 61). The Council added three more names to the committee, which made the Special Body of Experts on the Traffic in Women and Children a committee of eight: Alfred de Meuron, head of the International Bureau for Suppression of the White Slave Traffic; Princess Cristina Guistiniani Bandini, social worker and leader of the Catholic women's movement; Isidore Mauss, head of the child welfare division of the Belgian government; Joseph Louis Hennequin, director of the French Antitraffic Society; Yotaro Sugimura, from the Japanese ministry of foreign affairs; Paulina Luisi, physician and professor at the University of Montevideo; and Sidney Harris, a specialist in child welfare at the British Home Office. When Hennequin died in 1926, he was replaced by Pierre Le Luc, a French official with expertise in police administration. Also, Tadakatsu Suzuki, chief of Japanese legation in Paris, joined two sessions.

35. Hennigan, “Property War”; Keire, “The Vice Trust”; and Sandos, James, “Prostitution and Drugs: The United States Army on the Mexican-American Border, 1916–1917,” Pacific Historical Review 49 (1980): 621–45CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

36. Snow, William F., “The Program of the League of Nations Advisory Committee on the Traffic in Women and the Protection and Welfare of Children and Young People,” Proceedings of the Academy of Political Science in the City of New York 12 (1926): 411–17CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Johnson, Bascom, “International Traffic in Women and Children,” Journal of Social Hygiene 14 (1928): 65–75Google Scholar.

37. Pound, Roscoe, “Philosophical Theory and International Law,” Bibliotheca Visseriana 73 (1923): 73–90Google Scholar. Astorino argues that Manley O. Hudson brought Pound's sociological jurisprudence to international law. Hudson “forged a link between international law and the sociological nature of municipal law” Pound had emphasized. Astorino, “The Impact of Sociological Jurisprudence,” 286.

38. Wigdor, Roscoe Pound, 233–34.

39. Minutes of the First Session of the Advisory Committee on the Traffic in Women and Children, July 31, 1922 (Geneva: League of Nations, 1922), 16–18, 52–54.

40. Carstairs, Catherine, “Innocent Addicts, Dope Fiends and Nefarious Traffickers: Illegal Drug Use in 1920s English Canada” Journal of Canadian Studies 33 (1998) 145–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Marek Kohn, Dope Girls: The Birth of the British Drug Underground (London: Granta Books, 1992); and Paul Knepper, “The ‘White Slave Trade’ and the Music Hall Affair in 1930s Malta,” Journal of Contemporary History 44 (2009): 205–20Google Scholar.

41. Bascom Johnson, “Draft report to the Special Body of Experts to investigate the traffic in women and children,” League of Nations archives, United Nations Library, Geneva (Box S181), 7–8.

42. Pound, “The Scope and Purpose III,” 513.

43. Alan Swingewood, A Short History of Sociological Thought (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000), 63–68. For the role of social science evidence in law, see further Simon, Jonathan, “Katz at Forty: A Sociological Jurisprudence Whose Time Has Come,” Davis Law Review 41 (2007–8): 935–76Google Scholar.

44. The idea for including Panama in the investigation appears to have originated with Katharine Bement Davis. She was director of the women's reformatory at Bedford, New York, and member of the board of directors of ASHA. On learning of the Bureau of Social Hygiene's decision to fund the League's investigation, she told Rockefeller about her idea for a study of prostitution in the “island possessions of the United States”: Hawaii, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Panama. She also spoke with Snow and Johnson, and they let Rockefeller know that they were both in favor of it. Katharine Bement Davis to John D Rockefeller Jr., March 1, 1924; and Raymond Fosdick to John D Rockefeller Jr., March 11, 1924. Rockefeller Archives (RG 2, Series 0, Box 9, Folder 71).

45. “Republic of Panama,” July 7, 1926, 1–2. League of Nations Archives, United Nations Library, Geneva (Box 177).

46. “Panama City: Traffic in Women and Children,” August 14–15, 1924, 1–2. League of Nations archives, United Nations Library, Geneva (Box 177).

47. “Panama City,” August 16–17, 1924, 5–7.

48. “Panama City,” August 18, 1924, 12.

49. Ibid., 9.

50. “New York City: Unofficial,” November 24, 1926, 12–14. League of Nations Archives, United Nations Library, Geneva (Box S180).

51. In his reports of the interviews, Kinsie gave Walker the codename of 18-R, using the system he devised: T for “trafficker,” M for “madam,” O for “official,” and G for “prostitute”. R was for “respectable person.”

52. Paul Kinsie to Bascom Johnson, November 26, 1926. League of Nations Archives, United Nations Library, Geneva (Box S172).

53. Bascom Johnson, International Traffic in Women and Children (New York: American Social Hygiene Association, 1929), 12. Social Welfare History Archives, Elmer Andersen Library, University of Minnesota (Box 172).

54. Johnson, International Traffic, 5.

55. Report of the Special Body of Experts on the Traffic in Women and Children, Part 2 (Geneva: League of Nations, 1927), 165.

56. Pound, “The Need,” 608.

57. Ibid.

58. Legg, Stephen, “‘The Life of Individuals as Well as Nations’: International Law and the League of Nations Anti-Trafficking Governmentalities,” Leiden Journal of International Law 25 (2012): 648CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

59. Special Body of Experts, Verbatim Report of the 4th Session, July 9, 1926, 29–30. League of Nations Archives, United Nations Library, Geneva (Box S169).

60. “White Slave Report Revised for the League,” New York Times, December 5, 1927, 10.

61. “The World to Print Facts League Vice Inquiry Found,” New York World December 4, 1927, 1.

62. Arthur Sweetser to Rachel Crowdy, January 4, 1928. League of Nations Archives, Geneva (Box R3024).

63. “U.S. Fares Well in Exposure of White Slavery,” New York World, December 8, 1927, 6.

64. Charles H. Tuttle, Life Stories of a Celebrated Lawyer in New York and Lake George (Clifton Corners, NY: College Avenue Press, 2002). Tuttle was often cited in the press for his determination to ferret out corruption in government. He turned to his anticorruption credentials for the theme of his campaign when he decided to run for governor (in opposition to Franklin D. Roosevelt) in 1930.

65. “Tuttle Starts Inquiry,” New York Herald Tribune December 29, 1927, 8.

66. “White Slave Inquiry Here Blocked by League Agent,” New York Herald Tribune December 30, 1927, 14; and “White Slave Inquiry Here,” New York Times December 29, 1927, 40.

67. William R. Castle to Eric Drummond, February 9, 1928. League of Nations Archives, United Nations Library, Geneva (Box R3024).

68. Legg, “The Life of Individuals,” 649.

69. Advisory Committee on Traffic in Women and Children: Minutes of the Third Session, 7–11 April 1924 (Geneva: League of Nations, 1924), 24. Sidney Harris, the British representative, drafted a protocol. The Advisory Committee could not afford to react to every rumor, he said. Stories about white slave trafficking should be investigated by the central authorities of the country where they originated, so that the statement could be disproved. Such cases demanded immediate attention and quick action in the particular country, and it was important for the police, assisted by voluntary agencies, to bring offenders to justice. Where the allegation involved another country, this was not simple, but, under the treaty agreed at Paris in 1904, central authorities had an obligation to assist one another. Advisory Committee on Traffic in Women and Children: Minutes of the Third Session, 111.

70. Eric Drummond to William Snow, February 9, 1928. League of Nations Archives, United Nations Library, Geneva (Box R3024).

71. William Snow to William Castle, February 6, 1928. League of Nations Archives, United States Library, Geneva (Box R3024).

72. Drummond to Snow, February 9, 1928.

73. Rachel Crowdy to Eric Drummond, February 10, 1928. League of Nations Archives, United Nations Library, Geneva (Box R3024).

74. The name has been cut out from the copy of this document in the archives, but it appears in Kinsie's code book, which is also in the archives.

75. Eric Drummond to Gilson Blake, February 11, 1928. League of Nations Archives, United Nations Library, Geneva (Box R3024).

76. “White Slave Data Refuted by Tuttle,” New York Times March 9, 1928, 26.

77. “Agents Deny White Slavery,” New York Herald Tribune January 5, 1928, 11.

78. “Tuttle's Aide Told of Panama Cabarets,” New York Times January 7, 1928, 19.

79. Olive Whitin to George Worthington, [c. February 1929], Committee of Fourteen Papers, Manuscripts and Archives Division, New York City Public Library (Box 15). For the work of the Committee of Fourteen, see Keire, Mara, “The Committee of Fourteen and Saloon Reform in New York City, 1905–1920,” Business and Economic History 26 (1998): 573–83Google Scholar; Thomas C. Mackey, Pursuing Johns: Criminal Law Reform, Defending Character, and New York City's Committee of Fourteen, 1900–1930 (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2005); and Fronc, New York Undercover, 2009.

80. Wigdor, Roscoe Pound, 190. Breaking down the law–fact distinction has been central to the development of social science evidence in law. Monahan, John and Walker, Laurens, “Social Authority: Obtaining, Evaluating, and Establishing Social Science in Law,” University of Pennsylvania Law Review 134 (1986): 477–517CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See further the exchange between Roger Cotterrell and David Nelken over whether sociology and law are inseparable or distinct forms of inquiry. Cotterrell, Roger, “Why Must Legal Ideas be Interpreted Sociologically?” Journal of Law and Society 25 (1998): 171–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Nelken, David, “Blinding Insights? The Limits of a Reflexive Sociology of Law,” Journal of Law and Society 25 (1998): 407–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

81. Bascom Johnson to Eric Drummond, “Draft of points to be considered by US Attorney Charles H Tuttle for inclusion in any statement he may feel it necessary to give to newspapers concerning the League of Nations report on traffic in women and children,” March 2, 1928. League of Nations Archives, United Nations Library, Geneva (Box R3024). In 1929, the League agreed to allow Rockefeller's Bureau to fund a second investigation to cover the Far East despite opposition from the original Special Body of Experts and members of the Advisory Committee. Johnson continued to serve—the Bureau insisted on this—but Snow was replaced by the French choice, Eugène Regnault. Opponents of study also insisted on a Travelling Commission, which arranged sittings to take testimony from experts, instead of the on-the-spot field investigations in nighttime leisure districts of cities conducted by Kinsie and other undercover operatives. The report of 1933 did not receive the attention as did the 1927 report, and both Abbott and Crowdy had left by 1934. The League's experiment with sociological jurisprudence had ended. Report of the Commission of Enquiry into the Traffic in Women and Children in the East (Geneva: League of Nations, 1933). See further, Pliley, “Claims to Protection”; and Gorman, “Empire, Internationalism”.

82. Leonard Dunham to George Woods, March 9, 1928. Rockefeller Archives, Bureau of Social Hygiene Collection (Series 3, Box 10, Folder 203).

83. Paul Kinsie, “The Fight Against Commercialized Prostitution in the United States” (April 1957). Social Welfare History Archives, Elmer Andersen Library, University of Minnesota (Box 189).

84. Sacriste, Guillaume and Vauchez, Antoine, “The Force of International Law: Lawyers' diplomacy on the International Scene in the 1920s,” Law and Social Inquiry 32 (2007): 83–107CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

85. Barbara Metzger, “Towards an International Human Rights Regime During the Interwar Years: The League of Nations Combat of Traffic in Women and Children,” in Beyond Sovereignty: Britain, Empire and Transnationalism, c. 1860–1950, eds. Kevin Grant, Philippa Levine, and Frank Trentmann (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).