Court Opinion

ID: 9426417
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:17:50.244529+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:00.804039
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Stevens,
concurring in the denial of, certiorari.
The question we must first decide when acting on a petition for certiorari is whether we should set the case for full briefing and oral argument and thereafter decide the merits. Nothing in Mr. Justice Brennan’s opinion dissenting from the denial of certiorari in this case persuades me that any purpose would be served by such argument.1 For there is no reason to believe that the *964majority of the Court which decided Miller v. California, 413 U. S. 15, is any less adamant than the minority. Accordingly, regardless of how I might vote on the merits after full argument, it would be pointless to grant certiorari in case after case of this character only to have Miller reaffirmed time after time.
Since my dissenting Brethren have recognized the force of this reasoning in the past,2 I believe they also could properly vote to deny certiorari in this case without acting inconsistently with their principled views on the merits. In all events, until a valid reason for voting to grant one of these petitions is put forward, I shall continue to vote to deny. In the interest of conserving scarce law library space, I shall not repeat this explanation every time I cast such a vote.

 His quotation of the standard of obscenity applied by the trial judge in this case supports the argument made in his dissent in Paris Adult Theatre I v. Slaton, 413 U. S. 49, 73, that there has been a failure to define standards which will give adequate guidance to the lower state and federal courts in making obscenity determinations with any degree of predictable consistency. I do not understand him to be using the quotation as a separate argument for granting certiorari in this particular case because the Oregon Court of Appeals did not consider the constitutionality of that standard, but held instead that petitioners had not properly preserved this claim under Oregon law.

 Ratner v. United States, 423 U. S. 898, 900 n. (Brennan, J., dissenting); Sandquist v. California, 423 U. S. 900, 902 n. (Brennan, J., dissenting).