Court Opinion

ID: 9426314
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:17:32.547885+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:00.169617
License: Public Domain

Me. Justice Blackmun,
concurring.
I concur in the judgment of the Court and I join its opinion on the assumption that the Court is not deciding either of the following propositions:
1. Whether a State may institute in some state court a civil proceeding to adjudicate obscenity and then, merely by notifying publishers and exhibitors of the pendency of such adjudication, thereby bind them everywhere throughout the jurisdiction. I take it, specifically, that the concluding sentence of the fourth-to-last paragraph of the Court’s opinion, ante, at 676, does not resolve that question. If it does, I refrain from joining that resolution.
2. Whether a system which merely allows one to initiate a challenge to an ex parte determination of obscenity is constitutionally proper. I take it that the second paragraph in Part II of the Court’s opinion, ante, at 674, does not resolve that question. If it does, I refrain from joining it. I had believed, in this connection, that it is *678settled that the burden of proving that a particular expression is unprotected rests on the censor, Freedman v. Maryland, 380 U. S. 51, 58 (1965); Southeastern Promotions, Ltd. v. Conrad, 420 U. S. 546, 560 (1975), and is not to be shifted to the other side by a mere “avenue for initiating a challenge.”
I specify these reservations because I feel that each of the stated propositions in the First Amendment area may well be a close and difficult one, that neither has been resolved by this Court, and that, surely, neither needs to be decided in this case.