Word: prurient
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Still, Ginzburg hoped that the Supreme Court would let him off. In a series of cases the court had held censorship invalid under the First Amendment's guarantee of free expression. The key idea: material is not obscene unless by contemporary standards it "appealed to prurient interest" and was "utterly without redeeming social value." His publications had such value, said Ginzburg...
...vote of 5 to 4, it upheld Ginzburg's conviction. Speaking for the court, Justice William Brennan said that Ginzburg's products should not be considered out of context; his promotional efforts showed he was pandering to prurient interests. The mailed advertisements, said Brennan, "stimulated the reader" to look "for titillation, not for saving intellectual content...
...problem is too great for the artist to run away from; Bob flees to America. The amours he left behind may have been miserable with him; without him they are desolate. From this uncompromising situation, Gilliatt has drawn blood. Her dialogue is literate but not precious, unbowdlerized but not prurient. Through her characters' recognizability they become memorable...
...held them, in general, to be constitutional. "Obscenity is not within the area of constitutionally protected speech or press," the majority decided. And what is obscenity? A three-part test soon evolved: 1) the dominant theme of the material taken as a whole must appeal to a prurient interest in sex; 2) the material must be patently offensive because it affronts contemporary community standards; 3) the material must be utterly without redeeming social value...
...courts' three-part test been much help. How big is the community? A town, a state, the nation? What is prurient interest? What about "utterly without redeeming social importance"? Even if something is of value only to masochists, asks Justice Douglas, how can it be said to be utterly without social importance? Others argue, in effect, that no law is perfect; society must do the best it can. "The Sherman antitrust law forbids monopolies," says Political Scientist Reo Christenson. "What is a monopoly? What is an unfair trade practice? When is guilt proved beyond a reasonable doubt? Those indignant...