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United States obscenity law deals with the regulation or suppression of what is considered obscenity and therefore not protected speech or expression under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. In the United States, discussion of obscenity typically relates to defining what pornography is obscene. Issues of obscenity arise at ...
The work is considered obscene only if all three conditions are satisfied. [citation needed] The first two prongs of the Miller test are held to the standards of the community, and the third prong is based on "whether a reasonable person would find such value in the material, taken as a whole". [5] For legal scholars, several issues are important.
In 1969, the United States Supreme Court ruled in Stanley v. Georgia that people could view whatever they wished in the privacy of their own homes. In response, the United States Congress funded the President's Commission on Obscenity and Pornography, set up by President Lyndon B. Johnson to study pornography.
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 First Amendment puts protection for expressive content in terms that are both sweeping and absolute: "Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press" [2] Despite this broad protection, the roots of U.S. attempts to legally suppress obscenity extend back to the English common law offense of obscene libel and censorship of stage plays by the Master of the Revels.
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.
United States. [1] In its 6–3 decision written by William J. Brennan, Jr. , the court held that material being obscene depended upon "whether to the average person, applying contemporary community standards, the dominant theme of the material taken as a whole appeals to prurient interest."
[4] California lawmakers wrote the statute based on two previous Supreme Court obscenity rulings: [5] Memoirs v. Massachusetts [6] and Roth v. United States. [7] Miller was tried by jury at the Superior Court of Orange County. The judge instructed the jury to evaluate the evidence by the community standards of California as defined by the ...