Miller v. California

The Supreme Court case of Miller v. California was between Marvin Miller, the head of a large "adult" film and literature business, and the state of California. Miller sent out unrequested advertisements that contained explicit photographs to various people, promoting his adult books and films. Miller argued that he was protected under the Constitution because of his rights to freedom of speech and freedom of the press, but the Court stated that "states have a legitimate interest in prohibiting dissemination or exhibition of obscene material." In a 5-4 ruling, the Court decided in California's favor.

In my opinion, Miller, in some respects, invaded the privacy of the people who he mailed his "adult" advertisements to because a majority of people would not want to see these advertisements, nor would they want their children or other young people to see these explicit advertisements. In addition, there must be some limit on the rights in the Constitution that can be controlled by the states because unlimited freedom of speech, such as the distribution of obscene advertisements, can cause uprise, protests and instability.

The site CaseBriefs provides good background and abstracts of ridiculously long Supreme Court cases such as Miller v. California. CaseBriefs explains the viewpoint of the majority opinion of the Court that:

In determining whether speech is obscene, the basic guidelines for the trier of fact must be: (a) whether “the average person, applying contemporary community standards” would find the material, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest of sex, (b) whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law, and (c) whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literacy, artistic, political, or scientific value.

These were the new guidelines established for statutes regulating offensive material. These three guidelines, in essence, state that something is obscene if either the average person would find it lustful, or if it shows something, such as sex, in an offensive way, or if it lacks higher values.