Miller vs. California (1973)
Miller vs. California (1973)
Melvin Miller was prosecuted for distributing obscene material. He argued that there should be a national obscenity standard, not one based on local community standards. However, it was determined in that case that “[i]t is neither realistic nor constitutionally sound to read the First Amendment as requiring that the people of Maine or Mississippi accept public depiction of conduct found tolerable in Las Vegas, or New York City.”
Chief Justice Warren Burger outlined what he called “guidelines” for jurors in obscenity cases. These guidelines are the three prongs of the Miller test. They are currently used in many cases to help determine what is viewed as "obscene":
They are:
(1) whether the average person applying contemporary community standards would find the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest (i.e., erotic, lascivious, abnormal, unhealthy, degrading, shameful, or morbid interest in nudity, sex, or excretion);
(2) whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law; and
(3) whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value.
The above can be found on: https://mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/1585/the-miller-test
