Publication Date

1-1-1988

Document Type

Dissertation/Thesis

First Advisor

White, J. Patrick

Degree Name

B.A. (Bachelor of Arts)

Legacy Department

Department of History

Abstract

Heard by the Supreme Court in late 1965, Ginzburg v. United States has invited the Court to continue its attempts to define and clarify the limits of the First Amendment protection of materials dealing with sex, specifically the federal statute prohibiting "obscene" materials from the U.S. mails. Although the Court had previous decided in Roth v. U.S. that obscenity was not protected by the Constitution, doubts abounded about the precise definition of "obscenity." The Ginzburg standard was an attempt to solve this problem by adopting what legal experts have called "variable" obscenity, an approach to defining obscenity according to the specific circumstances in which the materials at issue were published and distributed. The variable standard differed significantly from the approach of earlier cases, which had used the "constant" obscenity definition and which had focused solely on the materials while disregarding the setting. Unfortunately, the effectiveness of this new standard has been extremely limited.

Comments

Includes bibliographical references.

Extent

38 pages

Language

eng

Publisher

Northern Illinois University

Rights Statement

In Copyright

Rights Statement 2

NIU theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from Huskie Commons for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without the written permission of the authors.

Media Type

Text

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