The Hicklin Test in The United States
Adoption of obscenity laws in the United States was largely due to the efforts of Anthony Comstock. Comstock's intense lobbying led to the passage in 1873 of an anti-obscenity statute known as the Comstock Act. Comstock was appointed postal inspector to enforce the new law. Twenty-four states passed similar prohibitions on materials distributed within the states. The law criminalized not only sexually explicit material, but also material dealing with birth control and abortion. Although lower courts in the U.S. had used the Hicklin standard sporadically since 1868, it was not until 1879, when prominent federal judge Samuel Blatchford upheld the obscenity conviction of D. M. Bennett using Hicklin, that the constitutionality of the Comstock Law became firmly established. In 1896, the Supreme Court in Rosen v. United States, 161 U.S. 29 (1896), adopted the Hicklin test as the appropriate test of obscenity.
However, in 1957, the Supreme Court ruled in Roth v. United States, 354 U.S. 476 (1957) that the Hicklin test was inappropriate. In Roth, Justice Brennan, writing for the majority, noted that some American courts had adopted the Hicklin standard, but that later decisions more commonly relied upon the question of "whether to the average person, applying contemporary community standards, the dominant theme of the material taken as a whole appeals to prurient interest." This Roth test became essentially the new definition of obscenity in the United States.
Read more about this topic: Hicklin Test
Famous quotes containing the words united states, test, united and/or states:
“What makes the United States government, on the whole, more tolerable—I mean for us lucky white men—is the fact that there is so much less of government with us.... But in Canada you are reminded of the government every day. It parades itself before you. It is not content to be the servant, but will be the master; and every day it goes out to the Plains of Abraham or to the Champs de Mars and exhibits itself and toots.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“He who has never failed somewhere, that man can not be great. Failure is the true test of greatness. And if it be said, that continual success is a proof that a man wisely knows his powers,—it is only to be added, that, in that case, he knows them to be small.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“The professional celebrity, male and female, is the crowning result of the star system of a society that makes a fetish of competition. In America, this system is carried to the point where a man who can knock a small white ball into a series of holes in the ground with more efficiency than anyone else thereby gains social access to the President of the United States.”
—C. Wright Mills (1916–1962)
“So the brother in black offers to these United States the source of courage that endures, and laughter.”
—Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960)