Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
The sale and distribution of obscene materials had been prohibited in most American states since the early 19th century, and by federal law since 1873. Adoption of obscenity laws in the United States at the federal level in 1873 was largely due to the efforts of Anthony Comstock, who created and led the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice.
These common-law ideas of obscenity formed the original basis of obscenity law in other common law countries, such as the United States. The classic definition of criminal obscenity is if it "tends to deprave and corrupt", stated in 1868 by Lord Justice Cockburn, in Regina v. Hicklin, now known as the Hicklin test.
The Miller test, also called the three-prong obscenity test, is the United States Supreme Court's test for determining whether speech or expression can be labeled obscene, in which case it is not protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution and can be prohibited.
While an earlier version did exist, as Sec. 5. of the Act for the Suppression of Trade in, and Circulation of, Obscene Literature and Articles of Immoral Use, [3] the modern version was initially enacted under Sec. 305. of the Tariff Act of 1930 and is currently codified (in a non-positive law title) at section 1305 of title 19, United States ...
The law has exceptions for doctors, scientists, prosecutors and a slew of other professions. House Bill 556 , introduced last week, would eliminate an exception for school librarians and some ...
Roth v. United States, 354 U.S. 476 (1957), along with its companion case Alberts v.California, was a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of the United States which redefined the constitutional test for determining what constitutes obscene material unprotected by the First Amendment. [1]
Obscene materials are defined as those that the average person, applying contemporary community standards, find, taken as a whole, appeal to the prurient interest; that depict or describe, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct or excretory functions specifically defined by applicable state law; and that the work, taken as a whole, lacks ...
In the United States, distribution of "obscene, lewd, lascivious, or filthy" materials is a federal crime. [1] The determination of what is "obscene, lewd, lascivious, or filthy" is up to a jury in a trial, which must apply the Miller test; however, due to the prominence of pornography in most communities most pornographic materials are not considered "patently offensive" in the Miller test.