1. You can enter into a contract for anything, but a contract for any illegal activity is unenforceable.
2. You are correct that fornication and adultery are not illegal, but soliciting prostitution is in fact illegal in most places.
3. The rationale for it being illegal is typically a bullshit one, but it is illegal nonetheless.
4. Fornication and adultery are not the same thing as soliciting prostitution. These activities often times overlap, but they are distinct things.
5. Making prostitution illegal does not violate your right to contract for any lawful activity. It violates your right to contract for "formerly" lawful activities.
6. If you could successfully argue that your right to contract for legal things is being infringed, then the legislature won't be able to make anything else illegal either. Not rape, not murder, not kidnapping, not stealing, not anything... because what are you going to say, making any of these things illegal violates your right to contract for them? That is not an argument that any court would ever uphold.
7. A better legal argument would be argue that this is about civil rights, which is what gay marriage advocates are successfully doing these days.
8. Notwithstanding my interpretation of our American legal system, I don't think that prostitution should even be a crime. It is merely a business transaction between private parties, generally speaking, nobody is being harmed, and there isn't even a victim, unless someone is being forced to do it against their will.
9. If a crime has to exist, then it should be limited to situations where someone is knowingly engaging in unsafe sex while having a dangerous STD, which would in fact cause harm to someone else. I would imagine that if states did legalize it, it would end up like how the porn studios operate, which is to say there would be regulations about being tested for STDs etc, and that's probably what it would take for it to be legalized. After all, you have to remember that the STD argument is what was commonly used as the rationale to justify making it illegal in the first place.
Posted By: indicaman981
The US Supreme Court ruled in Lochner v. New York, 198 U.S. 45 (1905) that the right to contract is a liberty found in the 14th amendment.
In the old days when fornication and adultery were unlawful, then the right to contract argument cannot work. But today the fornication and adultery is no longer illegal so the constitutional right of contract can exist for sex work.
The right to contract means that a person can contract for something that is lawful and doesn't create a disturbance in the neighborhood. You cannot contract for unlawful activities like murder, assault, drug dealing, etc. If sex between consenting adults are lawful, why a person cannot contract for it. A contract involves a consideration. An agreement is a deal may not involve a consideration.
A blanket law that makes prostitution is illegal everywhere violates someone’s right to contract for a lawful activity. You may not agree with my constitution argument but this is the controversy for the court to hear.
Yes, there are reasonable restriction can be placed on contracting. A city or town can limit the amount of customer for a location. The person can be prohibiting from contracting on streets and sidewalk. As long as there is no disturbance, lawful, and it is in private, then the right to contract can exist
