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You Say Intrastate, I Say Interstate: Why We Should Call The Whole Thing Off, Andrew Wiktor

Fordham Law Review

As society evolves, so do criminals. In the early twentieth century, America embraced the automobile, passed the Volstead Act, and created a national highway program. These developments inadvertently paved the way for interstate criminal enterprise. Infamous gangsters such as Al Capone were able to operate large-scale racketeering syndicates without fear of being prosecuted for two primary reasons: (1) states lacked jurisdiction, resources, or both to go after such criminals, and (2) there was no federal criminal statute to fill the gap left by the states. But as criminals evolve, so does society. In 1961, Congress, at the urging of Attorney …