A survey of the changing and charged relationship between pornography and legislation in 20th century America. Groups battling pornography must demonstrate that the products they seek to ban are truly obscene and not legitimately protected by the First Amendment-a requirement that often leads to public debate and controversy. Author Thomas C. Mackey thoroughly examines the problems and issues in public policymaking, legal precedents, and the people behind them. After a brief historical background, Pornography on Trial surveys and analyzes the leading issues and case law on obscenity from l957 to the present. Half the book consists of documents-judicial opinions-from key cases. There are biographical sketches of key people, laws, and concepts from Judge Learned Hand and the Hicklin test to Chief Justice Sir Alexander James Edmund Cockburn's judicial definition of obscenity from l868. The book also includes a chronology, a table of cases, and an annotated bibliography. Four narrative chapters discuss pornography in historical context from the founding of the United States Includes a documents section with court cases, statutes, law reviews, and historical journal articles as well as a chronology of the development of free speech law

In a time of great national division, a time of threats of resistance and counterthreats of suppression, a controversial president takes drastic measures to rein in his critics, citing national interest, national security, and his obligations as chief executive. If this seems familiar in our current moment of intense political agitation, that is all the more reason to attend to Thomas Mackey's gripping, learned, and eminently readable account of the Civil War-era case of Clement L. Vallandigham, an Ohio congressman arrested for campaigning against the war and President Lincoln's policies. In Mackey's telling, the story of this prominent 'Copperhead,' or Southern sympathizer, illuminates the problem of internal security, loyalty, and disloyalty faced by the Lincoln administration during wartime - and, more generally, the problem of determining the balance between executive power and tyranny, and between dissent and treason. Opposing Lincoln explores Vallandigham's opposition not only to Lincoln and his administration but also to Lincoln's use of force and his executive orders suspending habeas corpus. In addition to tracing Vallandigham's experiences of being arrested, tried, convicted by military commission instead of civilian courts, and then banished from the United States, this historical narrative introduces readers to Lincoln's most important statements on presidential powers in wartime, while also providing a primer on the wealth of detail involved in such legal and military controversies. Examining the long-standing issue of the limits of political dissent in wartime, the book asks the critical historical question of what reasonable lengths a legitimate government can go to in order to protect itself and its citizens from threats, whether external or internal. The case of Clement Vallandigham is, Mackey suggests, a quintessentially American story. Testing the limits of dissent in a political democracy in wartime, and of the scope and power of constitutional government, it clarifies a critical aspect of the American experience from afar.