Obscenity Rules

<p>For some he was America's leading smut king hauled into court repeatedly over thirty years for peddling obscene publications through the mail. But when Samuel Roth appealed a 1956 conviction he forced the Supreme Court to finally come to grips with a problem that had plagued both American society and constitutional law for longer than he had been in business. For while the facts of <em>Roth v. United States</em> were unexceptional its constitutional issues would define the relationship of obscenity to the First Amendment. </p><p>The Supreme Court's 6-3 decision in <em>Roth</em> for the first time tried to definitively rule on the issue of obscenity in American life and law--and failed. In this first book-length examination of the case Whitney Strub lays out the history of obscenity's meaning as a legal concept highlights the influence of antivice crusaders like Anthony Comstock and John Sumner and chronicles the shadowy career that led Roth to spend nearly a decade of his life imprisoned for the allegedly obscene materials that he sent through the mails. Strub then unwraps the events that produced <em>Roth v. United States</em> placing the trial in the context of its times--the Kinsey Reports the Kefauver hearings free speech debates--by using Roth's own private papers along with the records of the various prosecutions and the memos of the justices. </p><p>The significance of <em>Roth</em> as Strub reveals lay in the two faces of Justice William Brennan's majority opinion--which on the one hand reflected the liberalizing attitude toward sexual matters in mid-century America but on the other kept obscene expressions beyond First Amendment protection. Because that ruling points up the contradictions of a society where the prurient and repressive commingle uncomfortably Strub shows how <em>Roth</em> says much more about American sexual values than Brennan's written words necessarily acknowledged. </p><p>In our era of internet pornography and <em>Fifty Shades of Grey</em> it may be difficult to imagine a time when obscenity was a matter for the courts. As Strub tracks the legacy of <em>Roth</em> and obscenity law through the ongoing policing of acceptable sexuality into the twenty-first century his riveting narrative brings those times to life and helps readers navigate the fine line between what is socially acceptable and what is criminally obscene.</p>