Word: legalizes
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...shocking crime, though not an especially difficult one to solve. The murderer was apprehended and the case forgotten -- but not before it came to the attention of Harvard's Department of Legal Medicine, which carefully researched the crime, then constructed a miniature replica of the room in which the body was found...
Since the mid-1930's, the Department of Legal Medicine has twice each year held a seminar on violent death, a seminar open only to qualified police detectives with extensive experience in the investigation of homicide...
...legal morality" has also affected publishers' marketing practices. A representative of Grove Press (which has published Naked Lunch, the complete works of the Marquis de Sade, and The Story of O, as well as A Secret Life) said his publishing house avoids suits by pricing a book out of the large commercial market. It would be difficult to ban a $30 book because the publisher can argue that it won't be bought for kicks...
That any judge would feel himself or any random assembly of writers equipped to define "offensive material" or "redeeming social value" seems fantastically presumptuous. Any form of literary criticism is by definition subjective, and a judge's particular taste is, at best; a shaky basis for a legal decision...
Most people who defend the subjective legal standards necessary for deciding which books should be banned, argue that the young must be protected from lascivious literature at any cost. But almost all the books which appear in obscenity trials are adult books which adolescents are unlikely to read. It would appear that the moral defenders are actually trying to control the reading habits of adults who should be able to make their own choice...