Major Obscenity Court Cases Timeline

Here is just a quick overview/history of some major court cases involving obscenity. 

REGINA v. HICKLIN – (1868) – material was obscene if it had "The tendency … to deprave and corrupt those whose minds are open to such immoral influences, and into whose hands a publication of this sort may fall."

Comstock Act – (1873) – A congressman from
New England, Comstock, proposed a law that all obscene books, pamphlets, pictures and other materials to not allowed to be mailed.  Here is the exact law as it is today.

ROTH v. UNITED STATES – (1957) – the Supreme Court expressly held Hicklin unconstitutional. The test set forth in Roth is "Whether to the average person, applying contemporary community standards, the dominant theme of the material taken as a whole appeals to prurient interest."  Key to this is the ruling that the Hicklin test is unconstitutional. 

Fanny Hill case – (1966) – Under the test in Roth v. United States, as elaborated in subsequent cases, each of three elements must independently be satisfied before a book can be held obscene: (a) the dominant theme of the material taken as a whole appeals to a prurient interest in sex; (b) the material is patently offensive because it affronts contemporary community standards relating to the description or representation of sexual matters, and (c) the material is utterly without redeeming social value. 

MILLER v. CALIFORNIA – (1973) – in an attempt to set more concrete guidelines, converted the prurient appeal prong of the Roth test into "Whether the average person, applying contemporary community standards would find that the work taken as a whole appeals to the prurient interest."  The key to this is the use of the word “whole” in referring to something being obscene. 

All of these links, along with our lecutres, have been used and should be credited with the definitions following them.  Feel free to add to them to be used as a study guide.