10-27-2010, 03:29 PM
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It's 42
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Join Date: Jun 2010
Location: Global
Posts: 18,083
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413 U.S. 15
Miller v. California
Quote:
MR. JUSTICE DOUGLAS, dissenting.
I
Today we leave open the way for California [n1] to send a man to prison for distributing brochures that advertise books and a movie under freshly written standards defining obscenity which until today is decision were never the part of any law.
The Court has worked hard to define obscenity and concededly has failed. In Roth v. United States, 354 U.S. 476, it ruled that "[o]bscene material is material which deals with sex in a manner appealing to prurient interest." Id. at 487. Obscenity, it was said, was rejected by the First Amendment because it is "utterly without redeeming [p38] social importance." Id. at 484. The presence of a "prurient interest" was to be determined by "contemporary community standards." Id. at 489. That test, it has been said, could not be determined by one standard here and another standard there, 354 U.S. 476, it ruled that "[o]bscene material is material which deals with sex in a manner appealing to prurient interest." Id. at 487. Obscenity, it was said, was rejected by the First Amendment because it is "utterly without redeeming [p38] social importance." Id. at 484. The presence of a "prurient interest" was to be determined by "contemporary community standards." Id. at 489. That test, it has been said, could not be determined by one standard here and another standard there, Jacobellis v. Ohio, 378 U.S. 184, 194, but "on the basis of a national standard." Id. at 195. My Brother STEWART, in Jacobellis, commented that the difficulty of the Court in giving content to obscenity was that it was "faced with the task of trying to define what may be indefinable." Id. at 197.
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