Court Opinion

ID: 9459256
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 21:15:33.893155+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:36:05.871720
License: Public Domain

LEVIN H. CAMPBELL, Circuit Judge
(concurring).
I would be tempted to follow Judge Aldrich’s dissenting views were I not of the opinion that the law, as it now stands, precludes our doing so. However, were I to do so it would be with these qualifications:
I think the most potent objection to the Roth test rests on the virtual impossibility of applying it. “Obscenity” or “pornography” is not a word susceptible to close analysis and definition. Essentially they are pejoratives, indicating material which arouses disgust in someone. Unless one is to sanction banning all materials which any substantial body of opinion might regard as disgusting— a position inviting an intolerable degree of censorship in view of the many different standards today prevailing, and one properly rejected by the Supreme Court —one is left with the virtually impossible task of selecting out that which is “really” bad from that which is not quite so bad. Experts may help in bringing about a more sophisticated consideration of the issue, but I agree with Judge Aldrich that they will not meet the problem.
Assuming, then, that we may have to give up the attempt, what then ? I think that society should be allowed to regulate somewhat the display and circulation of highly offensive materials although not to ban them. Modern advertising in a market economy is a potent and intrusive force. It would be unfortunate if our society, already dominated by Nielsen ratings and televised fantasies of violence and unreality, should be further dominated by the fantasies of inventive merchants of smut. I think that families are entitled, if the legislature so determines, to a reasonable degree of protection from unsolicited materials, and from the unregulated intrusion by entrepreneurs of pornography in*76to their daily lives through the mails and media, including, at some future time, the omnipresent TV set.
Should the unsatisfactory effort to separate “hard core” from protected materials ever be abandoned, I think that attention might be focused on working out principles permitting reasonable restrictions on the most blatant public advertising and display of pornography. Admittedly the problem of definition would remain: but I think a somewhat looser definition would be permissible since the type of regulation I have in mind would relate only to the more intrusive forms of publicity and would fall considerably short of outright banning. While consenting adults should be free to receive and see what they want, I do not think that society is constitutionally required to surrender all attempt at control over the milieu within which its children are reared.
ALDRICH, Senior Judge (dissenting).
I do not, of course, disagree about children. It is difficult to disagree at all with the decision of the court unless one is to take the stand that hard core pornography is no longer to be considered unlawful. So far as the large scale, colored, and highly focused pictures, and the scenes they portray, in the case at bar are concerned, it is hard to think of what, other than scatological, has been omitted. Nevertheless, I confess that the full freedom advocated by the great majority of its members, see Presidential Report of the Commission on Obscenity and Pornography (1970), though said to be “among the most controversial reports ever produced by an official government body,”1 has much to recommend it, not only to avoid sporadic and highly selective enforcement that is eryingly conspicuous, and probably inevitable, but because I believe that public surfeit will more nearly effect a cure than will any process of judicial sanction.2 I must wonder, too, not only with the Commission majority, but with that well known nonlibertine Billy Graham,3 whether pornography is objectionable other than as a matter of aesthetics, and is but a reflection of contemporary behavior rather than a cause. If pornography, privately enjoyed, is not harmful, what is the need for a “redeeming social value”? More important, on what basis is a value judgment to be formed?
If pornography is to be prosecuted it is perhaps more logical to have juries weigh expert opinion than to apply, unaided, their own individual concepts. Yet, having dealt with experts in this field for over three decades, I am not sanguine enough to think that much will be accomplished. Even if any are found qualified to expound a national standard, cf. Jacobellis v. Ohio, 1964, 378 U.S. 184, 194-195, 84 S.Ct. 1676, 12 L.Ed.2d 793, how much weig-ht will an average juror attach to the witness’ appraisal if it differs from his own? We have insisted upon experts in patent cases, e.g., Contour Saws, Inc. v. L. S. Starrett Co., 1 Cir., 1970, 428 F.2d 314, 319, but that is to fill a conceded void. Will not the average juror, whether assisted or not, still not know anything about art, but know what he doesn’t like?
But deeper than the matter of experts, without in any way criticizing the scholarship of the court’s opinion, or its legal correctness in the light of judicial precedents, I wonder if we are not deluding ourselves. If a deck of cards illustrating 52 positions of sexual intercourse is not obscene — I reject the thought that the cards have a redeeming social value because of their obverse side — presumably because they are “straight,” although we are told that many persons consider positions other than the “mis*77sionary” unnatural; if two volumes illustrating oral and anal congress, although these are classic “unnatural” acts, are obscene in the jury’s mind, but not in the court’s because of their art, or the accompanying text, on what rational basis can one decide whether an “appendix” of 30 pages of graphic photographs of so-called unnatural and other acts is obscene? I resist the temptation to repeat the list of cases favoring the defendant to be found in defendants’ brief herein.
Whether publishers of putative pornography are jailed or not has come to be a game of chance 4 played with prosecutors, juries, courts, and finally, with all respect, with the Supreme Court, whose ultimate wisdom permits it to perceive what is, hard core and what is not. In the light of the First Amendment protection afforded to any speech falling short of pornographic condemnation, one may envisage the chilling effect that this uncertainty engenders. When, however difficult the boundary was to define, a large area of writing and illustration was considered impermissible, such nubilation had to be tolerated. With the area shrunk to its present proportions, the price seems very high.
Finally, I hope that the pandering rule, except insofar as it serves to protect from affront persons who, understandably, wish to be left alone, will go by the board. Is this to be the one field where seller’s talk is forbidden? Is a book any dirtier because the vendor says it is? The concept of a subjective test is reminiscent of the Expurgated Mother Goose, which, with tongue-in-cheek, was advertised as omitting “salacious” words. E.g., “Georgie Porgie, pudding and pie, _ed the girls and made them cry.” Since a reader with “lascivious thoughts,” would readily supply, at that time unprintable, words, did this become an obscene book?
Much current pornographic material is, to many, highly offensive. But offensiveness is not the measure of free speech, Cohen v. California, 1971, 403 U.S. 15, 91 S.Ct. 1780, 29 L.Ed.2d 284, and centuries of history demonstrate that what is one man’s poison is another man’s position. I wonder if the time has not come when consenting adults should not only be permitted to read what they choose, Stanley v. Georgia, 1969, 394 U.S. 557, 89 S.Ct. 1243, 22 L.Ed.2d 542, but should be free to purchase it. It is true that in United States v. Reidel, 1971, 402 U.S. 351, 91 S.Ct. 1410, 28 L.Ed.2d 813, the Court refused to apply Stanley to afford rights to a seller, direct or indirect. The opinion suggests to me an unwillingness to consider the readers’ rights as a matter of standing. See 402 U.S. at 355-356. The defense of standing has been rapidly eroding. Compare Arnold Tours v. Camp, 1970, 400 U.S. 45, 91 S.Ct. 158, 27 L.Ed.2d 179, where it might be said that Court adopted the position which only the minority was willing to take the previous term in Data Processing Service v. Camp, 1970, 397 U.S. 150, 167, 90 S.Ct. 827, 25 L.Ed.2d 184. Defendants in the case at bar, quite apart from their own claims to freedom of speech, would appear to have the same standing to represent the rights of a purchaser as had the defendant in Eisenstadt v. Baird, 1972, 405 U.S. 438, 92 S.Ct. 1029, 31 L.Ed.2d 349. Having milder reservations than my brethren, I would order judgment for the defendants.

. Greenleaf Classics, Inc., edition (1970) p. 8, Foreword of D. H. Gilmore.

: Concededly, public surfeit is not imminent, see Sexploitation: Sin’s Wages, Newsweek, Feb. 12, 1973, p. 78.

. Foreword, n. 1, at 11.

. A risk enabling them to milk the public, as did bootleggers during Prohibition. Op. cit. ante, at 9; see, also, n. 2.