Word: smut
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Despite that disclaimer and the fact that police were unable to prove that he had ever before peddled smut, Klor was convicted of violating a state law banning the distribution of obscene matter. Had he actually done...
...Eager to rejoice in the Supreme Court's apparent step backward toward your own smug preference for guarding society from "smut peddlers," [April 1] you neglect to criticize the Ginzburg case for its deviation from the legal distinction between direct and hearsay evidence: is obscenity now to be defined by examining not the product itself but how the salesman touts it? If indeed Americans so desperately need guidance that censorship is necessary, let our mentors at least concern themselves with the contents of the allegedly pornographic package instead of its wrapping...
...three cases produced 14 opinions-a sure sign of how intensely the Justices had wrestled with their constitutional duty to guard freedom of speech and press even as they sought a way to suppress the smut before them. In hot dissent, Justices Hugo Black and " William O. Douglas urged the court for the umpteenth time to quit all censorship on the ground that the First Amendment protects all expression, including obscenity, that does not actually incite antisocial conduct. "Sex is a fact of life," declared the 80-year-old Black. "I find it difficult to see how talk about...
...soon forced the nine harried Justices (average age: 64) to read shelves of allegedly dirty books. But though the court has accepted at least half a dozen obscenity cases since the Roth decision, it was unable to find a single piece of writing obscene. Meanwhile, the nation's smut peddlers flourished. For what Roth overlooked was the fact that "obscenity" may depend less on the material than on how the seller uses...
...third case, which cleared Fanny Hill, Brennan noted expert testimony in the Massachusetts trial that Fanny "belongs to the history of English literature rather than the history of smut." All the same, added Brennan, in an apparent invitation to further litigation, "evidence that the book was commercially exploited for the sake of prurient appeal, to the exclusion of all other values, might justify the conclusion that the book was utterly without redeeming social value...