Court Opinion

ID: 9430950
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:30:59.44714+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:26.439077
License: Public Domain

Justice Brennan,
dissenting.
Justice Stevens persuasively demonstrates the unconstitutionality of criminalizing the possession or sale of “obscene” materials to consenting adults. I write separately *507only to reiterate my view that any regulation of such material with respect to consenting adults suffers from the defect that “the concept of ‘obscenity’ cannot be defined with sufficient specificity and clarity to provide fair notice to persons who create and distribute sexually oriented materials, to prevent substantial erosion of protected speech as a byproduct of the attempt to suppress unprotected speech, and to avoid very costly institutional harms.” Paris Adult Theatre I v. Slaton, 413 U. S. 49, 103 (1973) (Brennan, J., dissenting). I therefore join all but footnote 11 of Justice Stevens’ dissent.