Court Opinion

ID: 9421874
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:00:16.764078+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:32.421430
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Douglas,
with whom Mr. Justice Black joins, concurring.
While I join in the opinion of the Court, I adhere to the views I expressed in Superior Films v. Department of Education, 346 U. S. 587, 588-589, that censorship of movies is unconstitutional; since it is a form of “previous restraint” that is as much at war with the First Amendment, made applicable to the States through the Fourteenth, as the censorship struck down in Near v. Minnesota, 283 U. S. 697. If a particular movie violates a valid law, the exhibitor can be prosecuted in the usual way. I can find in the First Amendment no room for any censor *698whéther he is scanning an editorial, reading a news broadcast, editing a novel or a play, ór previewing a movie.
Reference is made to British law and British practice. But they have little relevance to oui^ problem, since we live under a written Constitution. What is entrusted to the keeping of the legislature in England is protected from legislative interference or regulation here.. As we stated in Bridges v. California, 314 U. S. 252, 265, “No purpose in ratifying the Bill of Rights was clearer than that of securing-for the people of the United States much greater freedom of religion, expression, assembly, and petition than the people of Great Britain had ever ehjoyed.” If we had a provision in our Constitution for “reasonable” regulation of the press such as India has included in hers,1 there would be room for argument that censorship in the interests of morality would be permissible. Judges sometimes try to read the word “reasonable” into the First Amendment or make the rights it grants subject to reasonable regulation (see Beauharnais v. Illinois, 343 U. S. 250, 262; Dennis v. United States, 341 U. S. 494, 523-525), or apply to the States a watered-down version of the First Amendment. See Roth v. United States, 354 U. S. 476, 505-506. But its language, in terms that are absolute, is utterly at war with censorship. Different questions may arise as to censorship of some news when the Nation is actually at war. But any possible exceptions are extremely limited. That is why the tradition represented by Near v. Minnesota, supra, represents our constitutional ideal.
*699Happily government censorship has put down few roots in this country. The American tradition is represented by Near v. Minnesota, supra. See Lockhart and McClure, Literature, The Law of Obscenity, and the Constitution, 38 Minn. L. Rev. 295, 324-325; Alpert, Judicial Censorship of Obscene Literature, 52 Harv. L. Rev. 40, 53 et seq. We have in the United States no counterpart of the Lord Chamberlain who is censor oyer England’s stage. As late as 1941 only six States had systems of censorship for movies. Chafee, Free Speech in the United States (1941), p. 540. That number has now been reduced to four2 — Kansas, Maryland, New York, and Virginia — plus a few cities. Even in these areas, censorship of movies shown on television gives way by reason of the Federal Communications Act. See Allen B. Dumont Laboratories v. Carroll, 184 F. 2d 153. And from what information is available, movie censors do not seem to be very active.3 Deletion of the residual part of censorship that remains would constitute the elimination of an institution that intrudes on First Amendment rights.

 Section 19 (2) of the Indian Constitution permits “reasonable restrictions” on the exercise of the right of freedom of speech and expression in the interests, inter alia, of “decency or morality . . . .defamation or incitement to an offence.” This limitation is strictly construed; any restriction amounting to an “imposition” which will “operate harshly” on speech or'the press will be held invalid. See Seshadri v. District Magistrate, Tangare, 41 A. I. R. (Sup. Ct.) 747, 749.

 See Note, 71 Harv. L. Rev. 326, 328, n. 14.

 Id., p. 332.