Pope’s case of Obscenity
In Pope v. Illinois (1987), the United States Supreme Court was given a duty to determine whether an allegedly obscene material severe implications for science, arts, politics, and literature. In an obscenity case of Miller v. California (1973), the U.S. Supreme Court, had laid out a test against which the Obscenity of any material can be determined (Marshall, 2020). The most prominent of the three provisions was that the First Amendment would only protect works that lack significant literary, artistic, scientific, and political value. In this regard, if a given work under scrutiny lacks the four attributes, then it enjoys the protection of the Supreme Court. Besides that, an average American person using contemporary standards of the community should find the work in question to be appealing to the prurient interest. Additionally, if the work, as defined by the applicable state law, uses a patently offensive approach to depict sexual conduct or excretory functions, then the Supreme law will not protect it.. Don't use plagiarised sources.Get your custom essay just from $11/page
However, in Pope v. Illinois (1987) decision, the trial court found Pope guilty for violating the state criminal statute prohibiting the sale of an obscene magazine (Marshall, 2020). However, when the Pope appealed his case, the Supreme Court found out that the Illinois court had improperly relied on the community standards in defining that the sold magazine had some social value. According to Justice Stevens, who presided over the case, there is a challenge with the former formulations on how to determine the Obscenity of a material that can be determined. He claimed that the community or the said “reasonable” persons might not be relied upon to conclude that a given work is obscene. In this regard, therefore, the question of Obscenity should remain as laid down in the First Amendment, and the jury should use his/her interpretation of the policy concerning American communities to establish if a material is obscene.
Works Cited
Marshall, R. (2020). Obscenity Case Files: Pope v. Illinois | Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. Retrieved 22 March 2020, from http://cbldf.org/about-us/case-files/obscenity-case-files/obscenity-case-files-pope-v-illinois/