Miller v. California, 413 U.S. 15 (1973), was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court clarifying the legal definition of obscenity as material that lacks "serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value". The ruling was the origin of the three-part judicial test for determining obscene media content that can be banned by government authorities, which is now known as the Miller test.
Roth v. United States, 354 U.S. 476 (1957), along with its companion case Alberts v. California, was a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of the United States which redefined the constitutional test for determining what constitutes obscene material unprotected by the First Amendment. The Court, in an opinion by Justice William J. Brennan Jr. created a test to determine what constituted obscene material: Whether the average person, applying contemporary community standards would find that the material appeals to a prurient interest in sex, and whether the material was utterly without redeeming social value. Although the Court upheld Roth’s conviction and allowed some obscenity prosecutions, it drastically loosened obscenity laws. The decision dissatisfied both social conservatives who thought that it had gone too far in tolerating sexual imagery, and liberals who felt that it infringed on the rights of consenting adults.
Catharine Alice MacKinnon is an American feminist legal scholar, activist, and author. She is the Elizabeth A. Long Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School, where she has been tenured since 1990, and the James Barr Ames Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. From 2008 to 2012, she was the special gender adviser to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court.
R v Glad Day Bookshops Inc, (2004) is a leading Ontario Superior Court of Justice decision on pornography and homosexuality. The court found that a statutory scheme requiring the approval of the Ontario Film Review Board before films can be distributed or shown in Ontario violated the guarantee of freedom of expression in section 2 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Stanley v. Georgia, 394 U.S. 557 (1969), was a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of the United States that helped to establish an implied "right to privacy" in U.S. law in the form of mere possession of obscene materials.
Little Sisters Book and Art Emporium v Canada (Minister of Justice) [2000] 2 S.C.R. 1120, 2000 SCC 69 is a leading Supreme Court of Canada decision on freedom of expression and equality rights under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. It was held that the Customs Act, which gave broad powers to customs inspectors to exclude "obscene" materials, violated the right to freedom of expression under section 2 but was justifiable under section 1.
R v Keegstra, [1990] 3 SCR 697 is a freedom of expression decision of the Supreme Court of Canada where the court upheld the Criminal Code provision prohibiting the wilful promotion of hatred against an identifiable group as constitutional under the freedom of expression provision in section 2(b) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. It is a companion case to R v Andrews.
The Anti-pornography Civil Rights Ordinance is a name for several proposed local ordinances in the United States and that was closely associated with the anti-pornography radical feminists Andrea Dworkin and Catharine A. MacKinnon. It proposed to treat pornography as a violation of women's civil rights and to allow women harmed by pornography to seek damages through lawsuits in civil courts. The approach was distinguished from traditional obscenity law, which attempts to suppress pornography through the use of prior restraint and criminal penalties.
The National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE), previously known as Morality in Media and Operation Yorkville, is an American conservative anti-pornography organization. The group has also campaigned against sex trafficking, same-sex marriage, sex shops and sex toys, decriminalization of sex work, comprehensive sex education, and various works of literature or visual arts the organization has deemed obscene, profane or indecent. Its current president is Patrick A. Trueman. The organization describes its goal as "exposing the links between all forms of sexual exploitation".
The Committee on Obscenity and Film Censorship, better known as the Williams Committee, was a 1970s British Home Office committee chaired by Professor Bernard Williams. The task of the committee was to "review the laws concerning obscenity, indecency and violence in publications, displays and entertainments in England and Wales, except in the field of broadcasting, and to review the arrangements for film censorship in England and Wales".
Censorship in Japan has taken many forms throughout the history of the country. While Article 21 of the Constitution of Japan guarantees freedom of expression and prohibits formal censorship, effective censorship of obscene content does exist and is justified by the Article 175 of the Criminal Code of Japan. Historically, the law has been interpreted in different ways—recently it has been interpreted to mean that all pornography must be at least partly censored, and a few arrests have been made based on this law.
An obscenity is any utterance or act that strongly offends the prevalent morality of the time. It is derived from the Latin obscēnus, obscaenus, "boding ill; disgusting; indecent", of uncertain etymology. Generally, the term can be used to indicate strong moral repugnance and outrage in expressions such as "obscene profits" and "the obscenity of war". As a legal term, it usually refers to descriptions and depictions of people engaged in sexual and excretory activity.
Simulated child pornography is child pornography depicting what appear to be minors but which is produced without their direct involvement.
Feminist views on pornography range from total condemnation of the medium as an inherent form of violence against women to an embracing of some forms as a medium of feminist expression. This debate reflects larger concerns surrounding feminist views on sexuality, and is closely related to those on prostitution, BDSM, and other issues. Pornography has been one of the most divisive issues in feminism, particularly in Anglophone (English-speaking) countries. This division was exemplified in the feminist sex wars of the 1980s, which pitted anti-pornography activists against pro-pornography ones.
An anti-pornography movement in the United States has existed since before the 1969 Supreme Court decision of Stanley v. Georgia, which held that people could view whatever they wished in the privacy of their own homes, by establishing an implied "right to privacy" in U.S. law. This led President Lyndon B. Johnson, with the backing of Congress, to appoint a commission to study pornography. The anti-pornography movement seeks to maintain or restore restrictions and to increase or create restrictions on the production, sale or distribution of pornography.
Pornography in Canada has changed since the 1960s when the Criminal Law Amendment Act, 1968-69 that suppressed various laws related to sexual norms was passed. There has been a shift in the mode of determining whether a material is obscene or not with the R v. Butler judgment. The obscenity laws were challenged as violative of freedom of expression in R. v Butler. Obscenity is defined as follows under the Criminal Code: "the undue exploitation of sex or of sex and one or more of the following subjects; namely, crime, horror, cruelty and violence." The court held that the term “undue” should be interpreted on the degree of harm which flows from such exposure that predisposes people to act in an anti-social manner. The court ruled that pornography is harmful if it contains violence or explicit sex which is degrading or dehumanizing and which creates a substantial risk of harm, as it harms a person's right to be equal. Therefore, there is a shift from the community standard's test to the harm test post the Butler judgment.
The passage of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms in 1982 allowed for the provision of challenging the constitutionality of laws governing prostitution law in Canada in addition to interpretative case law. Other legal proceedings have dealt with ultra vires issues. In 2013, three provisions of the current law were overturned by the Supreme Court of Canada, with a twelve-month stay of effect. In June 2014, the Government introduced amending legislation in response.
Freedom of expression in Canada is protected as a "fundamental freedom" by section 2 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms; however, in practice the Charter permits the government to enforce "reasonable" limits censoring speech. Hate speech, obscenity, and defamation are common categories of restricted speech in Canada.
Book Censorship in Canada is primarily limited to the control of which books may be imported. Canada Border Services Agency is able to block materials considered to be inappropriate from entering the country, although this practice has become less frequent since the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms was put into place.
United States obscenity law deals with the regulation or suppression of what is considered obscenity and therefore not protected speech or expression under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. In the United States, discussion of obscenity typically relates to defining what pornography is obscene. Issues of obscenity arise at federal and state levels. State laws operate only within the jurisdiction of each state, and state laws on obscenity differ. Federal statutes ban obscenity and child pornography produced with real children. Federal law also bans broadcasting of "indecent" material during specified hours.
