# Miller v. California (413 U.S. 15)/Dissent Douglas

* Court Documents
* Case Syllabus
* Opinion of the Court
* Dissenting Opinions Douglas Brennan
Mr. Justice Douglas, dissenting.
Today we leave open the way for California to send a man to prison for distributing brochures that advertise books and a movie under freshly written standards defining obscenity which until today's 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 [p. 38] 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.
In Memoirs v. Massachusetts, 383 U.S. 413, 418, the Roth test was elaborated to read as follows: "[T]hree elements must coalesce: it must be established that (a) the dominant theme of the material taken as a whole appeals to a prurient interest in sex; (b) the material is patently offensive because it affronts contemporary community standards relating to the description or representation of sexual matters; and (c) the material is utterly without redeeming social value."
In Ginzburg v. United States, 383 U.S. 463, a publisher was sent to prison, not for the kind of books and periodicals he sold, but for the manner in which the publications were advertised. The "leer of the sensualist" was said to permeate the advertisements. Id., at 468. The Court said, "Where the purveyor's sole emphasis is on the sexually provocative aspects of his publications, that fact may be decisive in the determination of obscenity." Id., at 470. As Mr. Justice Black said in dissent, "... Ginzburg...is now finally and authoritatively condemned to serve five years in prison for distributing printed matter about sex which neither Ginzburg nor anyone else could possibly have known to be criminal." Id., at 476. That observation by Mr. Justice Black is underlined by the fact that the Ginzburg decision was five to four.
[p. 39] A further refinement was added by Ginsberg v. New York, 390 U.S. 629, 641, where the Court held that "it was not irrational for the legislature to find that exposure to material condemned by the statute is harmful to minors."
But even those members of this Court who had created the new and changing standards of "obscenity" could not agree on their application. And so we adopted a per curiam treatment of so-called obscene publications that seemed to pass constitutional muster under the several constitutional tests which had been formulated. See Redrup v. New York, 386 U.S. 767. Some condemn it if its "dominant tendency might be to 'deprave or corrupt' a reader." Others look not to the content of the book but to whether it is advertised "'to appeal to the erotic interests of customers.'" Some condemn only "hard-core pornography"; but even then a true definition is lacking. It has indeed been said of that definition, "I could never succeed in [defining it] intelligibly," but "I know it when I see it."
Today we would add a new three-pronged test: "(a) whether 'the average person, applying contemporary community standards' would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest,... (b) whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law, and (c) whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value."
Those are the standards we ourselves have written into the Constitution. Yet how under these vague tests can [p. 40] we sustain convictions for the sale of an article prior to the time when some court has declared it to be obscene?
Today the Court retreats from the earlier formulations of the constitutional test and undertakes to make new definitions. This effort, like the earlier ones, is earnest and well intentioned. The difficulty is that we do not deal with constitutional terms, since "obscenity" is not mentioned in the Constitution or Bill of Rights. And the First Amendment makes no such exception from "the press" which it undertakes to protect nor, as I have said on other occasions, is an exception necessarily implied, for there was no recognized exception to the free press at the time the Bill of Rights was adopted which treated "obscene" publications differently from other types of papers, magazines, and books. So there are no constitutional guidelines for deciding what is and what is not "obscene." The Court is at large because we deal with tastes and standards of literature. What shocks me may [p. 41] be sustenance for my neighbor. What causes one person to boil up in rage over one pamphlet or movie may reflect only his neurosis, not shared by others. We deal here with a regime of censorship which, if adopted, should be done by constitutional amendment after full debate by the people.
Obscenity cases usually generate tremendous emotional outbursts. They have no business being in the courts. If a constitutional amendment authorized censorship, the censor would probably be an administrative agency. Then criminal prosecutions could follow as, if, and when publishers defied the censor and sold their literature. Under that regime a publisher would know when he was on dangerous ground. Under the present regime—whether the old standards or the new ones are used—the criminal law becomes a trap. A brand new test would put a publisher behind bars under a new law improvised by the courts after the publication. That was done in Ginzburg and has all the evils of an ex post facto law.
My contention is that until a civil proceeding has placed a tract beyond the pale, no criminal prosecution should be sustained. For no more vivid illustration of vague and uncertain laws could be designed than those we have fashioned. As Mr. Justice Harlan has said:
   "The upshot of all this divergence in viewpoint is that anyone who undertakes to examine the Court's decisions since Roth which have held particular material obscene or not obscene would find himself in utter bewilderment." Interstate Circuit, Inc. v. Dallas, 390 U.S. 676, 707.
In Bouie v. City of Columbia, 378 U.S. 347, we upset a conviction for remaining on property after being asked to leave, while the only unlawful act charged by the statute was entering. We held that the defendants had received no "fair warning, at the time of their conduct" [p. 42] while on the property "that the act for which they now stand convicted was rendered criminal" by the state statute. Id., at 355. The same requirement of "fair warning" is due here, as much as in Bouie. The latter involved racial discrimination; the present case involves rights earnestly urged as being protected by the First Amendment. In any case—certainly when constitutional rights are concerned—we should not allow men to go to prison or be fined when they had no "fair warning" that what they did was criminal conduct.

#### II

If a specific book, play, paper, or motion picture has in a civil proceeding been condemned as obscene and review of that finding has been completed, and thereafter a person publishes, shows, or displays that particular book or film, then a vague law has been made specific. There would remain the underlying question whether the First Amendment allows an implied exception in the case of obscenity. I do not think it does and my views [p. 43] on the issue have been stated over and over again. But at least a criminal prosecution brought at that juncture would not violate the time-honored void-for-vagueness test.
No such protective procedure has been designed by California in this case. Obscenity—which even we cannot define with precision—is a hodge-podge. To send [p. 44] men to jail for violating standards they cannot understand, construe, and apply is a monstrous thing to do in a Nation dedicated to fair trials and due process.

#### III

While the right to know is the corollary of the right to speak or publish, no one can be forced by government to listen to disclosure that he finds offensive. That was the basis of my dissent in Public Utilities Comm'n v. Pollak, 343 U.S. 451, 467, where I protested against making streetcar passengers a "captive" audience. There is no "captive audience" problem in these obscenity cases. No one is being compelled to look or to listen. Those who enter newsstands or bookstalls may be offended by what they see. But they are not compelled by the State to frequent those places; and it is only state or governmental action against which the First Amendment, applicable to the States by virtue of the Fourteenth, raises a ban.
The idea that the First Amendment permits government to ban publications that are "offensive" to some people puts an ominous gloss on freedom of the press. That test would make it possible to ban any paper or any journal or magazine in some benighted place. The First Amendment was designed "to invite dispute," to induce "a condition of unrest," to "create dissatisfaction with conditions as they are," and even to stir "people to anger." Terminiello v. Chicago, 337 U.S. 1, 4. The idea that the First Amendment permits punishment for ideas that are "offensive" to the particular judge or jury sitting in judgment is astounding. No greater leveler of speech or literature has ever been designed. To give the power to the censor, as we do today, is to make a sharp and radical break with the traditions of a free society. The First Amendment was not fashioned as a vehicle for [p. 45] dispensing tranquilizers to the people. Its prime function was to keep debate open to "offensive" as well as to "staid" people. The tendency throughout history has been to subdue the individual and to exalt the power of government. The use of the standard "offensive" gives authority to government that cuts the very vitals out of the First Amendment. As is intimated by the Court's opinion, the materials before us may be garbage. But so is much of what is said in political campaigns, in the daily press, on TV, or over the radio. By reason of the First Amendment—and solely because of it—speakers and publishers have not been threatened or subdued because their thoughts and ideas may be "offensive" to some.
The standard "offensive" is unconstitutional in yet another way. In Coates v. City of Cincinnati, 402 U.S. 611, we had before us a municipal ordinance that made it a crime for three or more persons to assemble on a street and conduct themselves "in a manner annoying to persons [p. 46] passing by." We struck it down, saying: "If three or more people meet together on a sidewalk or street corner, they must conduct themselves so as not to annoy any police officer or other person who should happen to pass by. In our opinion this ordinance is unconstitutionally vague because it subjects the exercise of the right of assembly to an unascertainable standard, and unconstitutionally broad because it authorizes the punishment of constitutionally protected conduct.
"Conduct that annoys some people does not annoy others. Thus, the ordinance is vague, not in the sense that it requires a person to conform his conduct to an imprecise but comprehensive normative standard, but rather in the sense that no standard of conduct is specified at all." Id., at 614.
How we can deny Ohio the convenience of punishing people who "annoy" others and allow California power to punish people who publish materials "offensive" to some people is difficult to square with constitutional requirements.
If there are to be restraints on what is obscene, then a constitutional amendment should be the way of achieving the end. There are societies where religion and mathematics are the only free segments. It would be a dark day for America if that were our destiny. But the people can make it such if they choose to write obscenity into the Constitution and define it.
We deal with highly emotional, not rational, questions. To many the Song of Solomon is obscene. I do not think we, the judges, were ever given the constitutional power to make definitions of obscenity. If it is to be defined, let the people debate and decide by a constitutional amendment what they want to ban as obscene and what standards they want the legislatures and the courts to apply. Perhaps the people will decide that the path towards a mature, integrated society requires [p. 47] that all ideas competing for acceptance must have no censor. Perhaps they will decide otherwise. Whatever the choice, the courts will have some guidelines. Now we have none except our own predilections.

#### Notes

1 ↑ . California defines "obscene matter" as "matter, taken as a whole, the predominant appeal of which to the average person, applying contemporary standards, is to prurient interest, i. e., a shameful or morbid interest in nudity, sex, or excretion; and is matter which taken as a whole goes substantially beyond customary limits of candor in description or representation of such matters; and is matter which taken as a whole is utterly without redeeming social importance." Calif. Penal Code §311 (a).
2 ↑ . Roth v. United States, 354 U.S. 476, 502 (opinion of Harlan, J.).
3 ↑ . Ginzburg v. United States, 383 U.S. 463, 467.
4 ↑ . Jacobellis v. Ohio, 378 U.S. 184, 197 (Stewart, J., concurring).
5 ↑ . At the conclusion of a two-year study, the U. S. Commission on Obscenity and Pornography determined that the standards we have written interfere with constitutionally protected materials:
   "Society's attempts to legislate for adults in the area of obscenity have not been successful. Present laws prohibiting the consensual sale or distribution of explicit sexual materials to adults are extremely unsatisfactory in their practical application. The Constitution permits material to be deemed 'obscene' for adults only if, as a whole, it appeals to the 'prurient' interest of the average person, is 'patently offensive' in light of 'community standards,' and lacks 'redeeming social value.' These vague and highly subjective aesthetic, psychological and moral tests do not provide meaningful guidance for law enforcement officials, juries or courts. As a result, law is inconsistently and sometimes erroneously applied and the distinctions made by courts between prohibited and permissible materials often appear indefensible. Errors in the application of the law and uncertainty about its scope also cause interference with the communication of constitutionally protected materials." Report of the Commission on Obscenity and Pornography 53 (1970)
6 ↑ . It is said that "obscene" publications can be banned on authority of restraints on communications incident to decrees restraining unlawful business monopolies or unlawful restraints of trade, Sugar Institute v. United States, 297 U.S. 553, 597, or communications respecting the sale of spurious or fraudulent securities. Hall v. Geiger-Jones Co., 242 U.S. 539, 549; Caldwell v. Sioux Falls Stock Yards Co., 242 U.S. 559, 567; Merrick v. Halsey & Co., 242 U.S. 568, 584. The First Amendment answer is that whenever speech and conduct are brigaded—as they are when one shouts "Fire" in a crowded theater—speech can be outlawed. Mr. Justice Black, writing for a unanimous Court in Giboney v. Empire Storage Co., 336 U.S. 490, stated that labor unions could be restrained from picketing a firm in support of a secondary boycott which a State had validly outlawed. Mr. Justice Black said: "It rarely has been suggested that the constitutional freedom for speech and press extends its immunity to speech or writing used as an integral part of conduct in violation of a valid criminal statute. We reject the contention now." Id., at 498.
7 ↑ . See United States v. 12 200-ft. Reels of Film, post, p. 123; United States v. Orito, post, p. 139; Kois v. Wisconsin, 408 U.S. 229; Byrne v. Karalexis, 396 U.S. 976, 977; Ginsberg v. New York, 390 U.S. 629, 650; Jacobs v. New York, 388 U.S. 431, 436; Ginzburg v. United States, 383 U.S. 463, 482; Memoirs v. Massachusetts, 383 U.S. 413, 424; Bantam Books, Inc. v. Sullivan, 372 U.S. 58, 72; Times Film Corp. v. Chicago, 365 U.S. 43, 78; Smith v. California, 361 U.S. 147, 167; Kingsley Pictures Corp. v. Regents, 360 U.S. 684, 697; Roth v. United States, 354 U.S. 476, 508; Kingsley Books, Inc. v. Brown, 354 U.S. 436, 446; Superior Films, Inc. v. Department of Education, 346 U.S. 587, 588; Gelling v. Texas, 343 U.S. 960.
8 ↑ . The Commission on Obscenity and Pornography has advocated such a procedure:
   "The Commission recommends the enactment, in all jurisdictions which enact or retain provisions prohibiting the dissemination of sexual materials to adults or young persons, of legislation authorizing prosecutors to obtain declaratory judgments as to whether particular materials fall within existing legal prohibitions....
   "A declaratory judgment procedure...would permit prosecutors to proceed civilly, rather than through the criminal process, against suspected violations of obscenity prohibition. If such civil procedures are utilized, penalties would be imposed for violation of the law only with respect to conduct occurring after a civil declaration is obtained. The Commission believes this course of action to be appropriate whenever there is any existing doubt regarding the legal status of materials; where other alternatives are available, the criminal process should not ordinarily be invoked against persons who might have reasonably believed, in good faith, that the books or films they distributed were entitled to constitutional protection, for the threat of criminal sanctions might otherwise deter the free distribution of constitutionally protected material." Report of the Commission on Obscenity and Pornography 63 (1970).
9 ↑ . Obscenity law has had a capricious history:
   "The white slave traffic was first exposed by W. T. Stead in a magazine article, 'The Maiden Tribute.' The English law did absolutely nothing to the profiteers in vice, but put Stead in prison for a year for writing about an indecent subject. When the law supplies no definite standard of criminality, a judge in deciding what is indecent or profane may consciously disregard the sound test of present injury, and proceeding upon an entirely different theory may condemn the defendant because his words express ideas which are thought liable to cause bad future consequences. Thus musical comedies enjoy almost unbridled license, while a problem play is often forbidden because opposed to our views of marriage. In the same way, the law of blasphemy has been used against Shelley's Queen Mab and the decorous promulgation of pantheistic ideas, on the ground that to attack religion is to loosen the bonds of society and endanger the state. This is simply a roundabout modern method to make heterodoxy in sex matters and even in religion a crime." Z. Chafee, Free Speech in the United States 151 (1942).