Court Opinion

ID: 9643421
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 20:28:34.257569+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:11:00.431312
License: Public Domain

ARNOLD, Associate Justice
(concurring).
The statute under which the Postmaster General acted in this case makes the mailing of obscene matter a serious crime. It also provides that obscene material shall not be conveyed in the mails. The Postmaster General construed this statute as giving him power to exclude from the mails, without a hearing, any publication which in his judgment was obscene. The court below correctly decided that the order barring appellees’ pamphlet from the mails without a hearing was a violation of due process.
The power to exclude a publication from the mails without a hearing in practical effect permits the Postmaster General to cause irreparable injury to any publisher without the minimum safeguard of an opportunity to present his case. There are, of course, other means of distribution besides the mails, but they are not effective ones in the case of ordinary publications. To deprive a publisher of the use of the mails is like preventing a seller of goods from using the principal highway which connects him with his market. In making the determination whether any publication is obscene the Postmaster General necessarily passes on a question involving the fundamental liberty of a citizen. This is a judicial and not an executive function. It must be exercised according to the ideas of due process implicit in the Fifth Amendment. As we said in the case of Pike v. Walker: 1
“Whatever may have been the voluntary nature of the postal system in the period of its establishment, it is now the main artery through which the business, social, and personal affairs of the people are conducted and upon which depends in a greater degree than upon any other activity of government the promotion of the general welfare. Not only this, but the postal system is a monopoly which the government enforces through penal statutes forbidding the carrying of letters by other means. It would be going a long way, therefore, to say that in the management of the Post Office the people have no definite rights reserved by the First and Fifth Amendments of the Constitution, and if they have, it would follow that in administering the laws established to protect the mail and the regulations thereunder the duty of the Postmaster General would be, — to use the language of Justice Brandéis in the Burleson case, supra, [255 U.S. 407, 41 S.Ct. 352, 65 L.Ed. 704] — that:
“ ‘In making the determination he must, like a court or a jury, form a judgment *514whether certain conditions prescribed by Congress exist, on controverted facts or .by applying the law. The function is a strictly judicial one, although exercised in administering an executive office. And it is not a function which either involves or permits the exercise of discretionary power’ — which is to say, that his authority is governed by the Acts of Congress which confer it, and by the law of the land.”
The statement of Mr. Justice Brandéis quoted above occurs in a dissent. But on this particular point his conclusion is reinforced by the majority opinion 2 which upheld the order of the Postmaster General on the ground, among others, that a hearing had been accorded in that case which satisfied the requirements of due process.
The Burleson case dealt with matter which was unmailable because of the Espionage Act. But there is no reason of public policy which would require a different rule in case of obscenity. There are no absolute and enduring standards of what is obscene. The border line between obscenity and decency changes with the times, with public taste in literature and with public attitudes on sex instruction. The determination of whether a publication violates such changing standards is certainly one which should not be undertaken without a hearing.
We are not impressed with the argument that a rule requiring a hearing before mailing privileges are suspended would permit, while the hearing was going on, the distribution of publications intentionally obscene in plain defiance of every reasonable standard. In such a case the effective remedy is the immediate arrest of the offender for the crime penalized by this statute. Such action would prevent any form of distribution of the obscene material by mail or otherwise. If the offender were released on bail .the conditions of that bail should .be a sufficient protection against repetition of the offense before trial. But often mailing privileges are revoked in cases where the prosecuting officers are not sure enough to risk criminal prosecution. That was the situation here. Appellees have been prevented for a long period of time from mailing a publication which we now find contains nothing offensive to current standards of public decency. A full hearing is the minimum protection required by due process to prevent that kind of injury.
Affirmed.

 1941, 73 App.D.C. 289, 291, 121 E. 2d 37, 39.

 United States ex rel. Milwaukee Social Democratic Pub. Co. v. Burleson, 1921, 255 U.S. 407, 41 S.Ct. 352, 65 L.Ed. 704.