Community standards are local norms bounding acceptable conduct. Sometimes these standards can be itemized in a list that states the community's values and sets guidelines for participation in the community. Alternatively, informal standards may be imprecisely described as "I'll know it when I see it."
Often, such standards are invoked in legal situations to resolve disputes, especially around pornography. Critics argue that puritanical moralists have used community standards to wrongly punish minorities such as homosexuals or those in interracial marriages.
Colleges and universities enforce their standards through conduct offices in their Student Affairs divisions.
Famous quotes containing the words community and/or standards:
“The community which has neither poverty nor riches will always have the noblest principles.”
—Plato (c. 427–347 B.C.)
“The standards of His Majesty’s taste made all those ladies who aspired to his favour, and who were near the Statutable size, strain and swell themselves, like the frogs in the fable, to rival and bulk and dignity of the ox. Some succeeded, and others burst.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)