Stanley v. Georgia

Learn more

This article **needs more citations **. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources . Unsourced material may be challenged and removed .
Find sources: "Stanley v. Georgia"  – news  · newspapers  · books  · scholar  · JSTOR (December 2011) (Learn how and when to remove this message )

Stanley v. Georgia, 394 U.S. 557 (1969), is a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court that helped to establish an implied "right to privacy " in U.S. law in the form of mere possession of obscene materials.

The home of Robert Eli Stanley, a suspected bookmaker , was searched by police with a federal warrant to seize betting paraphernalia . They found none, but instead seized three reels of pornographic material from a desk drawer in an upstairs bedroom, and later charged Stanley with the possession of obscene materials, a crime under Georgia law. The conviction was upheld by the Supreme Court of Georgia .

In the Supreme Court of the United States, Justice Thurgood Marshall wrote the unanimous opinion that overturned the earlier decision and invalidated all state laws that forbade the private possession of materials judged obscene on the grounds of the First and Fourteenth amendments to the United States Constitution .

Justices Potter Stewart , William J. Brennan , and Byron White contributed a joint concurring opinion with a separate opinion having to do with the Fourth Amendment search and seizure provision. Justice Hugo Black also concurred expressing the view that all obscenity laws were unconstitutional.

The case also established an implied right to pornography, but not an absolute right, since in _Osborne v. Ohio _ (1990), the Supreme Court upheld a law which criminalized the possession of child pornography .

Contents

• 1 Legal background

• 2 Facts

• 3 Ruling

  • 3.1 Stewart concurrence

• 4 Impact

• 5 Subsequent cases

• 6 See also

• 7 Citations

• 8 Further reading

• 9 External links

Legal background

(https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Stanley_v._Georgia&action=edit&section=1 "Edit section: Legal background")

Prior to the Stanley case, the prevailing precedent was that of _Roth v. United States _, where obscene material was determined to be unprotected by the First Amendment right to speech. In Roth, the defendant sent lewd advertisements by mail and sold _American Aphrodite _, a magazine containing erotica and pornography content. A California court convicted him under state law, and when Roth appealed the decision, the Supreme Court upheld the conviction. In the majority decision, written by Justice Brennan, a new test was created for determining what can be considered obscene (the Hicklin test was used since a ruling in 1857, which the Court abandoned in Roth). Since the ruling in Roth in 1957, many cases in state and federal courts were determined using the case as primary justification.

Facts

(https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Stanley_v._Georgia&action=edit&section=2 "Edit section: Facts")

Robert Eli Stanley, a resident of Atlanta, Georgia , was a suspected bookmaker .

A warrant was granted to search his home. The searching officials did not find evidence of bookmaking, but instead discovered three reels of eight-millimeter film. They watched the films using a projector that they found in Stanley's home, and upon discovering that the films were pornographic, they seized the films as evidence and arrested Robert Stanley for possession of obscene matter, which was illegal by Georgia statute. Stanley was tried and convicted of possession of obscene material. Stanley appealed to the Supreme Court of Georgia , in which the court affirmed the decision of the lower court.

Ruling

(https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Stanley_v._Georgia&action=edit&section=3 "Edit section: Ruling")

The majority opinion was written by Justice Thurgood Marshall , joined by Chief Justice Warren, Justice Douglas, Justice Harlan, and Justice Fortas. In a unanimous ruling, the court reversed the decision of Supreme Court of Georgia and held that "the mere private possession of the obscene matter cannot be constitutionally be made a crime".

Although the defendant presented multiple arguments in his defense, the Court was able to reverse Georgia's decision using just one of them. A distinction was drawn by the Court between public display and private possession of obscenity. Neither Roth nor any other case at the time set a precedent for private possession of obscenity. The Court thus decided to set precedent on this issue in this case. Roth dealt with the mailing and advertising of obscenity. A companion case, _Alberts v. California _, involved the advertising and sale of obscene materials. All earlier cases were decided with the negative externality of obscenity in mind. They reasoned that members of the public, especially impressionable children, should have a valid expectation to not be inadvertently exposed to obscenity. Public display of obscenity was deemed an "important interest" in Roth. Private possession was not as interesting in the eyes of the Court.

Justice Marshall, wrote in his majority opinion that "If the first amendment means anything...it means that a State has no business telling a man, sitting in his own house, what books he may read, what films he may watch. Our whole constitutional heritage rebels at the thought of giving government the power to control men's minds."

The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects freedom of speech. In Winters v. New York, a notion was established that freedom of speech extended to what an individual possesses and chooses to read. "The Constitution protects the right to receive information and ideas, regardless of their social worth". For this reason, the Court dismissed Georgia's argument that drew a line between communication of ideas and "mere entertainment". Marshall noted that such a line could not be objectively drawn.

The Court argued that the Georgia decision encroached on Stanley's pursuit of happiness. Stanley should have a right to define his own spiritual nature. An individual's First Amendment rights must always be protected, unless there is cause to believe that a certain type of expression may cause significant public harm.

The Court dismissed Georgia in claiming that possession of obscenity necessarily led to "deviant sexual behavior" and "crimes of sexual violence", as there was little empirical evidence supporting the claim. The Court reasoned that primary crime deterrents sh

…