virtual philosopher: First Amendment, Free Speech, Art, Obscenity

July 21, 2009

First Amendment, Free Speech, Art, Obscenity

Yesterday was the 50th Anniversary of an important First Amendment decision, see Fred Kaplan's interesting article in the New York Times. A nice formula emerged: if it's both prurient (or lustful, lewd, or lascivious) and utterly socially worthless, it's OK to censor it; if it has some miniscule social worth, then prurience doesn't justify a ban. Judges are there to determine in particular cases whether or not the communication in question is utterly without social worth...

Posted at 09:59 AM in Free Speech | Permalink

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Comments

This is like many decisions, wether to ban it or not, it is such a fine line, there is not a direct clar rule that can answer the question. Therefore it ends up being on people failed judgment, which is even better than rigid impossed judgments

Posted by: mariana | July 22, 2009 at 04:19 AM

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