| Roth v. United States | | Supreme Court of the United States | Argued April 22, 1957
Decided June 24, 1957
| | Full case name: | Samuel Roth v. United States | | | Citations: | 354 U.S. 476; 77 S. Ct. 1304; 1 L. Ed. 2d 1498; 1957 U.S. LEXIS 587; 14 Ohio Op. 2d 331; 1 Media L. Rep. 1375 | | | | Prior history: | Cert. to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit | | | | | | Holding | | Obscenity is not protected by the First Amendment, but more strictly defines what is considered "obscene". | | Court membership | Chief Justice: Earl Warren
Associate Justices: Hugo Black, Felix Frankfurter, William O. Douglas, Harold Hitz Burton, Tom C. Clark, John Marshall Harlan II, William J. Brennan, Charles Evans Whittaker | | Case opinions | Majority by: Brennan
Joined by: Frankfurter, Burton, Clark, Whittaker
Concurrence by: Warren (in the judgment of the court only)
Dissent by: Harlan
Dissent by: Douglas
Joined by: Black
| | Overruled by | | Miller v. California, 413 U.S. 15 (1973) | Roth v. United States, 354 U.S. 476 (1957), along with its companion case, Alberts v. California, was a landmark case before the United States Supreme Court which redefined the Constitutional test for determining what constitutes obscene material unprotected by the First Amendment. Image File history File links Seal_of_the_United_States_Supreme_Court. ...
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For the swing saxophonist and occasional singer, see Earle Warren Earl Warren (March 19, 1891 – July 9, 1974) was a California district attorney of Alameda County, the 20th Attorney General of California, the 30th Governor of California, and the 14th Chief Justice of the United States (from 1953 to 1969). ...
Hugo Black Hugo LaFayette Black (February 27, 1886 – September 25, 1971) was a Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States (1937 - 1971). ...
Felix Frankfurter (November 15, 1882 – February 22, 1965) was an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court. ...
William Orville Douglas (October 16, 1898 – January 19, 1980) was a United States Supreme Court Associate Justice. ...
Harold Hitz Burton (June 22, 1888 - October 28, 1964) was an American Senator and Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. ...
Tom Campbell Clark (September 23, 1899 in Dallas, Texas –June 13, 1977) was United States Attorney General from 1945-1949 and an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States (1949-1967). ...
John Marshall Harlan II (May 20, 1899 – December 29, 1971) was an American jurist. ...
William J. Brennan, official portrait, 1976. ...
Charles Evans Whittaker (February 22, 1901 – November 26, 1973) was an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court from 1957 to 1962. ...
Holding Obscene materials are defined as those that the average person, applying contemporary community standards, find, taken as a whole, appeal to the prurient interest; that depict or describe, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by applicable state law; and that, taken as a whole, lack serious...
Year 1957 (MCMLVII) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link displays the 1957 Gregorian calendar). ...
A landmark decision is the outcome of a legal case (often thus referred to as a landmark case) that establishes a precedent that either substantially changes the interpretation of the law or that simply establishes new case law on a particular issue. ...
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Prior history Under the common law rule that prevailed before Roth, articulated most famously in the 1868 English case Hicklin v. Regina, any material that tended to "deprave and corrupt those whose minds are open to such immoral influences" was deemed "obscene" and could be banned on that basis. Thus, works by Balzac, Flaubert, James Joyce and D.H. Lawrence were banned based on isolated passages and the effect they might have on children. Honoré de Balzac Honoré de Balzac (May 20, 1799 - August 18, 1850), was a French novelist. ...
Gustave Flaubert Gustave Flaubert (December 12, 1821 – Croisset, May 8, 1880) is counted among the greatest Western novelists. ...
This article is about the writer and poet. ...
D. H. Lawrence David Herbert Lawrence (11 September 1885 - 2 March 1930) was one of the most important, certainly one of the most controversial, English writers of the 20th century, who wrote novels, short stories, poems, plays, essays, travel books, and letters. ...
Samuel Roth, who ran a literary business in New York, was convicted under a federal statute criminalizing the sending of "obscene, lewd, lascivious or filthy" materials through the mail for advertising and selling a publication called American Aphrodite, ("A Quarterly for the Fancy-Free") containing literary erotica and nude photography. David Alberts, who ran a mail-order business from Los Angeles, was convicted under a California statute for publishing pictures of "nude and scantily-clad women." The Court granted a writ of certiorari and affirmed both convictions. Samuel Roth (1893 - 1974) was an American publisher and writer. ...
The Case Roth came down as a 6-3 decision, with the opinion of the Court authored by William J. Brennan, Jr.. The Court repudiated the Hicklin test and defined obscenity more strictly, as material whose "dominant theme taken as a whole appeals to the prurient interest" to the "average person, applying contemporary community standards." Only material meeting this test could be banned as "obscene." However, Brennan reaffirmed that obscenity was not protected by the First Amendment and thus upheld the convictions of Roth and Alberts for sending obscene material over the mails. William Joseph Brennan, Jr. ...
Congress could ban material, "utterly without redeeming social importance," or in other words, "whether to the average person, applying contemporary community standards, the dominant theme of the material taken as a whole appeals to the prurient interest."
Chief Justice Earl Warren, worried that "broad language used here may eventually be applied to the arts and sciences and freedom of communication generally," but agreeing that obscenity is not constitutionally protected, concurred only in the judgment. For the swing saxophonist and occasional singer, see Earle Warren Earl Warren (March 19, 1891 – July 9, 1974) was a California district attorney of Alameda County, the 20th Attorney General of California, the 30th Governor of California, and the 14th Chief Justice of the United States (from 1953 to 1969). ...
Justices Hugo Black and William O. Douglas, First Amendment "literalists," dissented in Roth, arguing vigorously that the First Amendment protected obscene material. Hugo Black Hugo LaFayette Black (February 27, 1886 – September 25, 1971) was a Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States (1937 - 1971). ...
William Orville Douglas (October 16, 1898 – January 19, 1980) was a United States Supreme Court Associate Justice. ...
Justice John Marshall Harlan II dissented in Roth, involving a federal statute, but concurred in Alberts, involving a state law, on the grounds that while states had broad power to prosecute obscenity, the federal government did not. John Marshall Harlan II (May 20, 1899 – December 29, 1971) was an American jurist. ...
In Memoirs v. Massachusetts, 383 U.S. 413 (1966), a plurality of the Court further redefined the Roth test by holding unprotected only that which is "patently offensive" and "utterly without redeeming social value," but no opinion in that case could command a majority of the Court either, and the state of the law in the obscenity field remained confused. Memoirs v. ...
With the Court unable to agree as to what constituted obscenity, the Justices were put in the position of having to personally review almost every obscenity prosecution in the United States, with the Justices gathering for weekly screenings of "obscene" motion pictures (Black and Douglas pointedly refused to participate, believing all the material protected). Meanwhile, pornography and sexually oriented publications proliferated as a result of the Warren Court's holdings, the "Sexual Revolution" of the 1960s flowered, and pressure increasingly came to the Court to allow leeway for state and local governments to crack down on obscenity. During his ill-fated bid to become Chief Justice, Justice Abe Fortas was attacked vigorously in Congress by conservatives such as Strom Thurmond for siding with the Warren Court majority in liberalizing protection for pornography. In his 1968 presidential campaign, Richard Nixon campaigned against the Warren Court, pledging to appoint "strict constructionists" to the Supreme Court. For the Macy Gray song, see Sexual Revolution (song). ...
Abe Fortas (June 19, 1910–April 5, 1982) was a U.S. Supreme Court associate justice. ...
James Strom Thurmond (December 5, 1902 – June 26, 2003) was an American politician who served as governor of South Carolina and as a United States Senator representing that state. ...
The Demise of Roth In Miller v. California (1973), a five-person majority agreed for the first time since Roth as to a test for determining constitutionally unprotected obscenity, superseding the Roth test. By the time Miller was considered in 1973, Brennan had abandoned the Roth test and argued that all obscenity was constitutionally protected, unless distributed to minors or unwilling third-parties. Holding Obscene materials are defined as those that the average person, applying contemporary community standards, find, taken as a whole, appeal to the prurient interest; that depict or describe, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by applicable state law; and that, taken as a whole, lack serious...
Research Resources - First Amendment Library entry on Roth v. United States
See also This is a list of all the United States Supreme Court cases from volume 354 of the United States Reports: Reid v. ...
This article is about the general concept. ...
The United States Bill of Rights consists of the first 10 amendments to the United States Constitution. ...
Wikisource has original text related to this article: The United States Constitution The United States Constitution is the supreme law of the United States of America. ...
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