Parties: Stanley v. Georgia
Date: 1969-04-07
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Paragraph: 6 - It is now well established that the Constitution protects the right to receive information and ideas. N84* 'This freedom (of speech and press) * * * necessarily protects the right to receive * * *.' Martin v. City of Struthers
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Paragraph: 9 - N85* These are the rights that appellant is asserting in the case before us. He is asserting the right to read or observe what he pleases—the right to satisfy his intellectual and emotional needs in the privacy of his own home. He is asserting the right to be free from state inquiry into the contents of his library. Georgia contends that appellant does not have these rights, that there are certain types of materials that the individual may not read or even possess. Georgia justifies this assertion by arguing that the films in the present case are obscene. But we think that mere categorization of these films as 'obscene' is insufficient justification for such a drastic invasion of personal liberties guaranteed by the First and Fourteenth Amendments. Whatever may be the justifications for other statutes regulating obscenity, we do not think they reach into the privacy of one's own home.
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Paragraph: 10 - And yet, in the face of these traditional notions of individual liberty, Georgia asserts the right to protect the individual's mind from the effects of obscenity. We are not certain that this argument amounts to anything more than the assertion that the State has the right to control the moral content of a person's thoughts. To some, this may be a noble purpose, but it is wholly inconsistent with the philosophy of the First Amendment.
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Paragraph: 6 - It is now well established that the Constitution protects the right to receive information and ideas. N38* 'This freedom (of speech and press) * * * necessarily protects the right to receive * * *.' Martin v. City of Struthers, 319 U.S. 141, 143, 63 S.Ct. 862, 863, 87 L.Ed. 1313 (1943); see Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479, 482, 85 S.Ct. 1678, 1680, 14 L.Ed.2d 510 (1965); Lamont v. Postmaster General, 381 U.S. 301, 307—308, 85 S.Ct. 1493, 1496 1497, 14 L.Ed.2d 398 (1965) (Brennan, J., concurring); cf. Pierce v. Society of the Sisters, 268 U.S. 510, 45 S.Ct. 571, 69 L.Ed. 1070 (1925). This right to receive information and ideas, regardless of their social worth, see Winters v. New York, 333 U.S. 507, 510, 68 S.Ct. 665, 667, 92 L.Ed. 840 (1948), is fundamental to our free society. Moreover, in the context of this case—a prosecution for mere possession of printed or filmed matter in the privacy of a person's own home—that right takes on an added dimension. For also fundamental is the right to be free, except in very limited circumstances, from unwanted governmental intrusions into one's privacy.
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Paragraph: 4 - N66* However, neither Roth nor any subsequent decision of this Court dealt with the precise problem involved in the present case. Roth was convicted of mailing obscene circulars and advertising, and an obscene book, in violation of a federal obscenity statute. The defendant in a companion case, Alberts v. California, 354 U.S. 476, 77 S.Ct. 1304, 1 L.Ed.2d 1498 (1957), was convicted of 'lewdly keeping for sale obscene and indecent books, and (of) writing, composing and publishing an obscene advertisement of them * * *.' Id., at 481, 77 S.Ct., at 1307. None of the statements cited by the Court in Roth for the proposition that N67* 'this Court has always assumed that obscenity is not protected by the freedoms of speech and press' were made in the context of a statute punishing mere private possession of obscene material; the cases cited deal for the most part with use of the mails to distribute objectionable material or with some form of public distribution or dissemination. Moreover, none of this Court's decisions subsequent to Roth involved prosecution for private possession of obscene materials. Those cases dealt with the power of the State and Federal Governments to prohibit or regulate certain public actions taken or intended to be taken with respect to obscene matter. Indeed, with one exception, we have been unable to discover any case in which the issue in the present case has been fully considered.
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