Opinion ID: 1367422
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: post-colonial regulation of obscenity

Text: Early obscenity laws were few in number, and few were brought before the courts until 1870, when federal and state governments, mainly due to the efforts of Anthony Comstock, [17] actively campaigned to suppress obscenity. See Paris Adult Theatre I v. Slaton, 413 U.S. 49, 93 S.Ct. 2628, 37 L.Ed.2d 446 (1973). In subsequent obscenity cases, the basic definition of obscenity which received virtually unanimous judicial acceptance until Roth v. United States, 354 U.S. 476, 77 S.Ct. 1304, 1 L.Ed.2d 1498 (1957), was announced, was that formulated by the Court of Queens Bench in England in 1868, where Chief Justice Cockburn stated: . . . I think the test of obscenity is this, whether the tendency of the matter charged as obscene is to deprave and corrupt those whose minds are open to such influences, and into whose hands a publication of this sort may fall. Regina v. Hicklin, L.R. 3 Q.B. 360 (1868). The effect of the Hicklin test was to permit obscene material to be judged by the impact of isolated excerpts of material upon particularly sensitive persons. See United States v. Kennerley, 209 F. 119 (S. D.N.Y.1913); MacFadden v. United States, 165 F. 51 (3d Cir. 1908); United States v. Clarke, 38 F. 500 (E.D.Mo.1889); Commonwealth v. Buckley, 200 Mass. 346, 86 N.E. 910 (1909). In Roth v. United States, supra , the United States Supreme Court expressly rejected the Hicklin test, stating that it was unconstitutionally restrictive of freedom of speech and the press. Strangely enough, this was the first time that the Supreme Court ruled directly on the question of whether obscenity was protected under the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. The Supreme Court, in Roth, refused to grant obscenity protection, asserting that it was utterly without redeeming social importance, and measuring it according to the following standard: [W]hether to the average person, applying contemporary community standards, the dominant theme of the material taken as a whole appeals to prurient interest. Subsequent cases elaborated upon the Roth standard, and eventually, the Supreme Court articulated three elements which must coalesce to establish that expression constituted obscenity: (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. See Memoirs, supra. The Supreme Court, in Memoirs, clarified the meaning of the third part of the three-pronged definition of obscenity, concluding that even though a book may be found to possess the requisite prurient appeal and be deemed to be patently offensive, it cannot be proscribed unless it is found to be `utterly' without redeeming social value. [Emphasis added.]