1. A Preface to Understanding Pornography and the First Amendment October 28, 2004

2. A Brief Consideration of Terms Erotica Pornography Obscenity

3. A Brief History of Suppression Intrinsic tie to blasphemy First federal law—1842 War and pornography—The “Civil” War Anthony Comstock’s One Man Crusade 1920s—Limits on Balzac, Voltair, Lawrence, Joyce, and Rousseau, BC Rosen v. US 1897—upholds the Hicklin rule

4. The Hicklin Rule (England) Chief Justice Alexander Cockburn: “I think the test of obscenity is this, whether the tendency of the matter charged as obscenity is to deprave and corrupt those whose minds are open to such immoral influences, and into whose hands a publication of this sort might fall.”

5. The US rejects Hicklin (1933) US District Court Judge Learned Hand Case involves James Joyce’s Ulysses Hand’s test Judge the work in its entirety A person of average sexual instinct Will the material “stir the sex impulses” Obscenity in Chaplinsky as categorical exception

6. Other early cases Mutual Film Corp. v. Industrial Commission of Ohio (1915)—film has no First Amendment protection Burstyn v. Wilson (1952)—attempted to suppress Rossellini’s “The Miracle”, 9-0, no constitutional basis for blasphemy, overturns Mutual Film Kingsley International Pictures v. Regents (1959)—can’t suppress ideas like adultery may be OK

7. Roth v. US (1957) Obscenity is not protected…a work is obscene if: Utterly without redeeming social importance and… Sexually lewd, defined as an average person, applying contemporary community standards, find the dominant theme of the material appeals to the prurient interest