Court Opinion

ID: 9468126
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 02:05:45.770691+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:40:42.320090
License: Public Domain

GOODWIN, Circuit Judge,
specially concurring.
The district court found, in a more or less contested context, that the challenged books fit the Miller definition of obscenity and therefore that they were not eligible to enter this country under 19 U.S.C. § 1305. We affirm and I concur.
The record made in the trial court fell short of presenting to the district judge an undeniable claim of a medical exception to § 1305. That question was presented 24 years ago to Judge Palmieri at a time when American “obscenity” law was beginning to take shape under the uncertain guidance of Roth v. United States, 354 U.S. 476, 77 S.Ct. 1304, 1 L.Ed.2d 1498 (1957). See United States v. 31 Photographs, etc., 156 F.Supp. 350 (S.D.N.Y.1957).
It will be recalled that in 31 Photographs the court was faced with the problem of a statute whose plain meaning excluded from importation into this country pictorial representations of erotic and reproductive behavior that the University of Indiana claimed it needed for scientific purposes. One can embroider at length upon the relationships between Dr. Kinsey’s research and various grades of pornography; but some relationship between art and science in the study of human behavior, including sexual behavior, was beyond serious argument. Judge Palmieri found that the institute that was to receive the photographs did not have a prurient interest in them. Judge Palmieri held that in the hands of the institute, at least, the pictures were not obscene; then, to avoid resting entirely upon the potentially treacherous ground that obscenity could be in the eye of the beholder, the *384judge chose an alternate, or fall back, position that the particular pictures in question were privileged in the consignee institute because the statute did not cover material imported for medical purposes.
Whether or not Congress intended to allow a “medical exception” to its statute making pornography nonimportable, the District Court for the Southern District of New York did discover such an exception, and the Republic survived. I agree with Judge Palmieri that the legal definitions of obscenity should not be used to preclude the admission of research material. I am willing to accept the existence of a medical exception to 19 U.S.C. § 1305 because to refuse to accept that exception would involve us in endless definitional problems.
Nothing could be more obscure than the line between the prurient versus the scientific interests of various individuals who believe that there may be some value in studying unconventional depictions of human behavior for various scientific or pseudo scientific reasons. These judicial speculations would nearly always end in some sort of subjective analysis of the challenged material, and the court would, one way or another, be spending its time censoring some self-proclaimed scientist’s reading matter.
Because I believe with John Milton that anyone cultivated enough to be a good censor would not have the job, and that anyone willing to be a censor is categorically unfit for the job, I happily accept the medical exception that the doctor in this case claims to be his right.
In this case, however, the doctor did not make the kind of record that would justify this court in holding that the findings of fact by the trier were clearly erroneous. Accordingly, I concur.