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 "Roth
v. United States" were unexceptional, its constitutional issues
would define the relationship of obscenity to the First Amendment.
The Supreme Court's 6-3 decision in "Roth" 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 "Roth v.
United States," 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.
The significance of "Roth," 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 Roth says much more about
American sexual values than Brennan's written words necessarily
acknowledged.
In our era of internet pornography and "Fifty Shades of Grey,"
it may be difficult to imagine a time when obscenity was a matter
for the courts. As Strub tracks the legacy of "Roth" 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.
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