page_title: Augustus Noble Hand
section_title: Censorship
hierarchical_section_title: Augustus Noble Hand / Notable decisions / Censorship
caption_attribution_description: Nederlands: De "Ulysses" van James Joyce in de "John Rylands Library" in Manchester, Engeland
context_page_description: Augustus Noble Hand was a United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York and later was a United States Circuit Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. His most notable rulings restricted the reach of obscenity statutes in the areas of literature and contraceptives. He was the older first cousin of famed judge Learned Hand, who served on both courts with his cousin during most of Augustus Hand's tenure.
context_section_description: The same year, Hand further limited the Tariff Act's restrictions in United States v. One Book Called Ulysses, 72 F.2d 705 (2d Cir. 1934), which ruled that the novel Ulysses, by James Joyce, was not obscene and therefore could not be banned from import into the United States. The opinion was significant in its urging that any test of obscenity could not rely on mere isolated passages but instead had to consider the work as a whole, a test the Supreme Court later endorsed. These principles, filtered through a long line of later cases, ultimately influenced the United States Supreme Court's case law on obscenity standards. Hand's opinion also displayed a historical perspective of the harm of overzealous censorship:
  Art certainly cannot advance under compulsion to traditional forms, and nothing in such a field is more stifling to progress than limitation of the right to experiment with a new technique. The foolish judgments of Lord Eldon about one hundred years ago, proscribing the works of Byron and Southey, and the finding by the jury under a charge by Lord Denman that the publication of Shelley's "Queen Mab" was an indictable offense are a warning to all who have to determine the limits of the field within which authors may exercise themselves. We think that Ulysses is a book of originality and sincerity of treatment and that it has not the effect of promoting lust. Accordingly it does not fall within the statute, even though it justly may offend many.
   Hand's cousin, Judge Learned Hand, joined in Augustus Hand's opinion; Chief Judge Martin Manton dissented.
caption: Ulysses, Egoist Press, 1922
exif: {"Image Make": "NIKON CORPORATION", "Image Model": "NIKON D80", "Image Orientation": "0", "Image XResolution": "300", "Image YResolution": "300", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Picasa 3.0", "Image DateTime": "2009:10:16 13:55:16", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image ExifOffset": "2282", "Image Padding": "[]", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "5158", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "2637", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/25", "EXIF FNumber": "4", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Manual", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "400", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2009:10:16 13:55:16", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2009:10:16 13:55:16", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "4", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "19/5", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF LightSource": "Unknown", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire", "EXIF FocalLength": "25", "EXIF SubSecTime": "30", "EXIF SubSecTimeOriginal": "30", "EXIF SubSecTimeDigitized": "30", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "3217", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "2157", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "5034", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed", "EXIF CVAPattern": "[0, 2, 0, 2, 1, 2, 0, 1]", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Manual Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "1", "EXIF FocalLengthIn35mmFilm": "37", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF GainControl": "Low gain up", "EXIF Contrast": "Normal", "EXIF Saturation": "Normal", "EXIF Sharpness": "Normal", "EXIF ImageUniqueID": "b545cfe899ec606095c5da36cdcd1092", "EXIF SubjectDistanceRange": "0", "EXIF Padding": "[]", "EXIF OffsetSchema": "4086"}