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Roth V. United States Case Summary

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Case: Roth v. United States (1957) Facts: Samuel Roth was convicted in New York in a federal criminal case of violating the Comstock Act. He owned a mail order book business and was prosecuted for violating the law of using the US Postal service for mailing obscene material. He was convicted of mailing obscene advertisements and an obscene book. His appeal to the US Second Circuit Court of Appeals was denied, but Judge Jerome Frank gave a dissenting concurrence. Judge Frank requested that the US Supreme Court accept the case in order to clarify obscenity laws in his explanation (Strub, 2013). The case was accepted by the US Supreme Court by Writ of Certiorari and combined with a similar case of Alberts v. California in which State laws regarding obscenity were being challenged. Issue: The question the US Supreme Court was asked to decide was whether or not the Federal Comstock Act and similar Califonia State law violate First Amendment rights of freedom of speech. Specifically for Roth, was the Comstock Act unconstitutional? Holding: (Vote: 6-3) No: Obscenity is not a protected type of speech under the First Amendment. Majority Reasoning: …show more content…

Application: The Court’s rule regarding the constitutionality of the Comstock Act and other State Statues regulating obscenity is stated as, “We hold that obscenity is not within the area of constitutionally protected speech or press” (Roth, 1957, p. 485). Since obscenity was determined to not be protected under the First Amendment, this affirmed the lower court’s ruling. Justice Brennan sought to further clarify obscenity without facilitating censorship (Strub, 2013). His furthered clarification of the Hicklin test of what can be described as obscenity and how courts can legally differentiate the obscene from the non-obscene with due process (Alexander, 2008). This definition, or test, was used by lower courts and the US Supreme Court until it was replaced by Brennan himself in Miller v California, 1973 (Gaede,

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