Limit On The Government's Power To Ban Private Possession of Obscenity
Stanley v. Georgia limited the power of the government to police the private possession of obscenity. The majority opinion defended the free and unimpeded acquisition of facts and knowledge, regardless of their apparent social value. The Court reasoned that unless the pornography is presented in a way that creates a negative externality on others, especially minors (Roth), no individual can be stopped from owning and viewing pornography in private.
Read more about this topic: Stanley V. Georgia
Famous quotes containing the words limit, government, power, ban, private, possession and/or obscenity:
“Now for civil service reform. Legislation must be prepared and executive rules and maxims. We must limit and narrow the area of patronage. We must diminish the evils of office-seeking. We must stop interference of federal officers with elections. We must be relieved of congressional dictation as to appointments.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“No government ought to be without censors; and where the press is free no one ever will.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“The interest in life does not lie in what people do, nor even in their relations to each other, but largely in the power to communicate with a third party, antagonistic, enigmatic, yet perhaps persuadable, which one may call life in general.”
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)
“On fields all drenched with blood he made his record in war, abstained from lawless violence when left on the plantation, and received his freedom in peace with moderation. But he holds in this Republic the position of an alien race among a people impatient of a rival. And in the eyes of some it seems that no valor redeems him, no social advancement nor individual development wipes off the ban which clings to him.”
—Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (1825–1911)
“Today, the degradation of the inner life is symbolized by the fact that the only place sacred from interruption is the private toilet.”
—Lewis Mumford (1895–1990)
“Virtue and vice suppose the freedom to choose between good and evil; but what can be the morals of a woman who is not even in possession of herself, who has nothing of her own, and who all her life has been trained to extricate herself from the arbitrary by ruse, from constraint by using her charms?... As long as she is subject to man’s yoke or to prejudice, as long as she receives no professional education, as long as she is deprived of her civil rights, there can be no moral law for her!”
—Flora Tristan (1803–1844)
“Since obscenity is the truth of our passion today, it is the only stuff of art—or almost the only stuff.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)