Obscenity law

In your Unit 3 Video Engager, you learned about the Supreme Court’s involvement in pornography and obscenity laws. First, explain how the free speech protections in the First Amendment relate to pornography and obscenity. Then, explain the three rules set out by Chief Justice Warren Burger for determining whether something is pornographic. Last, give your opinion on this three part test and whether you think it adequately balances the need for the protection of free speech with the need to regulate obscenity. Why do you think this? The topics of obscenity and pornography are not protected under the First Amendment, this can be due to the fact that they are so hard to define. This has caused many problems for students under the age of…

The Miller test contains three points courts must consider when deciding on obscene material: “the average person…would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to prurient interests; the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct defined by state law; and the work lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value” (Trager et al., p.506). The first ruling of the court in Kearns case deals with is it being patently offensive under Ohio law. In order…

Illinois Obscenity Statute- under which they had been convicted- was unconstitutional because it had allowed the “value” of the magazines to be judged by community standards. In response, Illinois contended that the statute was indeed constitutional because the three elements of the Miller standard were conjoined under community definition of obscenity. To come to a verdict, the Supreme Court used the basis of the Miller Test and past obscenity…

It may seem as if free speech and expression is a simple concept to understand, but it becomes difficult to draw a line when obscenity is present. Obscene documents are not easy to detect. There were times where many forms of free speech were considered obscene by the Supreme Court. The only way to determine whether material was obscene or not was by the Comstock Act. A variety of victims of the Comstock Act tried to write what they thought would help the society, but they were prosecuted for…

For years, obscenity in the media has been a topic of debate and it’s coverage under the First Amendment. Roth v. United States (1957) and Miller v. California (1973) proved to have significant impact and influence on the creation of the legal definition of obscenity in the United States. In the case of Roth v. United States (1957), Samuel Roth was tried and convicted for the publication and mailing of obscene materials, which was a violation in the Southern District of New York, under the…

conflict, and students suffer only learning “safe” material labeled by the censors. Even more often, textbook publishers remove or edit material to increase sales and to avoid being censored. All of the following books have been subject to banning based on racism, sexual references, religion, and witchcraft: To Kill a Mockingbird, Animal Farm, Huckleberry Finn, The Scarlet Letter, The Catcher in the Rye, Harry Potter, and many others. These novels have been used in the educational system to…

Obscenity is legally defined as a class of “hard-core “pornography that is so offensive and so lacking in social value that is denied Frist Amendment protection. Obscene expression is unprotected in all media. Indecent materials are less graphic or erotic than obscenity. Indecency is protected in the print media and on the Internet but may be restricted in the more intrusive broadcast media and may be limited in some ways on cable television and in telephone communications. The case involved…

If a state obscenity law is thus limited, First Amendment values are adequately protected by ultimate independent appellate review of constitutional claims when necessary. (“Three Pronged Obscenity Test”) People who are appointed into office at the Supreme Court vote on whether or not a work of art is offensive. The small Supreme Court should not be able to decide what the whole United States would decide a work of art is obscene. There is no unequivocal test that says that a work of art is…

The joke has been made by some that if prostitution is indeed the world’s oldest profession, than pornography must be the world’s oldest expression. Indeed, the very word pornography was originally used to describe any art or literature that depicted the life of prostitutes (Jenkins, 2014), while obscenity is a word believed to have come from the Middle French word obscène in the late 16th century, meaning “offensive to the senses, or to taste and refinement” (Harper, 2001). In order to…

William Rice Mrs. Garrett English 12-3 3 February 2016 Censorship in Entertainment How effective is censorship on the general public? Censorship is the practice of officially examining books, movies, etc., and suppressing unacceptable parts. It also helps parents keep track of what their children watch or play. It is proven that it is better to have censorship on music, games, and movies because what most kids see they want to try. Even though most states had laws against prize fighting they…