Background of The Case
Prior case law had established two relevant categories of speech that were outside the protection of the First Amendment. In Miller v. California, 413 U.S. 15 (1973), the Court had held that the First Amendment allowed the government to restrict obscenity. And in New York v. Ferber, 458 U.S. 747 (1982), the Court held that the government could restrict the distribution of child pornography to protect children from the harm inherent in making it. The Court extended Ferber to mere possession of child pornography in Osborne v. Ohio, 495 U.S. 103 (1990).
Read more about this topic: Ashcroft V. Free Speech Coalition
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“Pilate with his question “What is truth?” is gladly trotted out these days as an advocate of Christ, so as to arouse the suspicion that everything known and knowable is an illusion and to erect the cross upon that gruesome background of the impossibility of knowledge.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
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