History
Prior to the Stanley case, the prevailing precedent was that of Roth v. United States, where obscene material was determined to be unprotected by the First Amendment right to speech. In Roth, the defendant sent lewd advertisements by mail and sold American Aphrodite, a magazine containing erotica and pornography. A California court convicted him under state law, and when Roth appealed the decision, the Supreme Court upheld the conviction. In the majority decision, written by Justice Brenann, a new test was created for determining what can be considered obscene (The Hicklin test was used since a ruling in 1857, which the Court abandoned in Roth.) By 1960, the sexual revolution was in full swing in the US, and newly defined social norms clashed with the established statutory and common law of the country. Since the ruling in Roth in 1957, many cases in state and federal courts were determined using the case as primary justification.
Read more about this topic: Stanley V. Georgia
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