Court Opinion

ID: 9679671
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 07:02:14.22549+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:17:17.977719
License: Public Domain

DONNELLY, Judge,
concurring.
The issue of obscenity “has proved uniquely stubborn and resistant. * * * Indeed, the idea of regulating obscenity by law while permitting case by case challenges in the courts sometimes seems like an invention of the Devil designed to embarrass and unhinge the legal system.” H. Kalven, A Worthy Tradition 34 (1988).
The issue of obscenity remains relatively unaddressed outside the United States Supreme Court. This is unfortunate; but it is not happenstance.
In New State Ice Co. v. Liebmann, 285 U.S. 262, 311, 52 S.Ct. 371, 386-387, 76 *531L.Ed. 747 (1932) (Brandéis, J., dissenting), Justice Brandéis observed that denial of the right of the States to experiment “may be fraught with serious consequences to the Nation. It is one of the happy incidents of the federal system that a single courageous State may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country.”
However, in Cooper v. Aaron, 358 U.S. 1, 78 S.Ct. 1401, 3 L.Ed.2d 5 (1958), the Court ignored the wisdom of Brandéis and declared that its interpretations of the Constitution in a particular case in one State constitute the “supreme law of the land” under Article VI of the Constitution and are of binding effect in all of the States. In North Carolina v. Butler, 441 U.S. 369, 376, 99 S.Ct. 1755, 1759, 60 L.Ed.2d 286 (1979) the justices confirmed that the Cooper assertion must be “read for all its worth, as a statement that the Constitution is only and always what the Supreme Court says it is.” L. Tribe, American Constitutional Law 32 (1978).1
If free of the Cooper and Butler and Miller constraints, I would hold that the freedom to communicate obscenity to prior consenting adults is absolute but “would give recognition to an overriding concern where state interests of protecting children2 and unconsenting adults3 were involved.” State v. All Star News Agency, Inc., 580 S.W.2d 245, 248-249 (1979) (Donnelly, J., concurring). Cf. State v. Henry, 302 Or. 510, 732 P.2d 9 (1987).
I concur.

. If, as is stated in its Preamble, the Constitution was ordained and established by the people, the inevitable question is: Should the people continue to permit the justices to speak with finality as to the extent of their own power?

. It would seem that the States "may make proper and careful differentiation between adults and children." Ginsberg v. New York, 390 U.S. 629, 673, 88 S.Ct. 1274, 1297, 20 L.Ed.2d 195 (1968) (Fortas, J., dissenting).

.It would seem that the States should be permitted to protect the right of unconsenting adults to be let alone. Warren & Brandéis, The Right to Privacy, 4 Harv.L.Rev. 193 (1890).