Miller v. California 413 U.S. 15 (1973) Paris Adult Theatre I v. Slaton 413 U.S. 49 (1973)

• Author: Kim Mclane Wardlaw
• Pages: 1734-1735

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For the first time since ROTH V. UNITED STATES (1957), a Supreme Court majority agreed on a definition of OBSCENITY. The Court had adopted the practice of summarily reversing obscenity convictions when at least five Justices, even if not agreeing on the appropriate test, found the material protected. The states were without real guidelines; and the requirements of JACOBELLIS V. OHIO (1964) that each Justice review the material at issue had transformed the Court into an ultimate board of censorship review.

To escape from this "intractable" problem, the Miller Court reexamined obscenity standards. Chief Justice WARREN E. BURGER'S majority opinion, reaffirming Roth, articulated specific safeguards to ensure that state obscenity regulations did not encroach upon protected speech. The Court announced that a work could constitutionally be held to be obscene when an affirmative answer was appropriate for each of three questions:

(a) whether "the average person applying contemporary community standards" would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interes.?;

(b) whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law; and

(c) whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value.

Three aspects of the Miller formula are noteworthy. First, the work need not be measured against a single national standard, but may be judged by state community standards. Second, state obscenity regulations must be confined to works that depict or describe sexual conduct. Moreover, the states must specifically define the nature of that sexual conduct to provide due NOTICE to potential offenders. Third, the Court rejected the "utterly without redeeming social value" standard of MEMOIRS V. MASSACHUSETTS (1966). To merit FIRST AMENDMENT protection, the work, viewed as a whole, must have serious social value. A token political or social comment will not redeem an otherwise obscene work; nor will a brief erotic passage condemn a serious work.

In a COMPANION CASE, Paris Adult Theater I, the Court held that regulations concerning the public exhibition of obscenity, even in "adult" theaters excluding minors, were permissible if the Miller standards were met. The prohibition on privacy grounds against prosecuting possession of obscene material in one's home, recognized in STANLEY

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V. GEORGIA...