An Overview to Obscenity and the 1st Amendment

• Let’s get terms straight--pornography, erotica, and obscenity

• A Brief History of Suppression Efforts

  • Ties to blasphemy
  • First federal law--1842, Civil War
  • Comstock’s Crusade
  • Rosen v. US (1896)--adopts the Hicklin rule
  • 1920’s--growing attacks on literature--Balzac, Voltaire, Joyce and Rousseau

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