Miller test
The Miller test, also called the three-prong obscenity test, is the United States Supreme Court's test for determining whether speech or expression can be labeled obscene, in which case it is not protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution and can be prohibited.[1][2]
History and details
The Miller test was developed in the 1973 case Miller v. California.[3] It has three parts:
- Whether "the average person, applying contemporary community standards", would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest,
- Whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct or excretory functions[4] specifically defined by applicable state law,
- Whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.[note 1]
The work is considered obscene only if all three conditions are satisfied.[citation needed] The first two prongs of the Miller test are held to the standards of the community, and the third prong is based on "whether a reasonable person would find such value in the material, taken as a whole".[5] For legal scholars, several issues are important. One is that the test allows for community standards rather than a national standard. What offends the average person in one community may differ from what offends the average person in another community.[6] Another important issue is that the Miller test asks for an interpretation of what the "average" person finds offensive, rather than what the more sensitive persons in the community are offended by, as obscenity was defined by the previous test, the Hicklin test, stemming from the English precedent.[7]
Criticism
Miller test may lead to greater censorship
The first two prongs of the Miller test – that material appeal to the prurient interest and be patently offensive – have been said to require the impossible: "They require the audience to be turned on and grossed out at the same time".[8]
Problem of jurisdiction in the Internet age
See also
- Artistic freedom
- Artistic merit
- Dost test
- I know it when I see it
- Literary merit
- Nitke v. Gonzales – a case involving Barbara Nitke and the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom regarding Internet obscenity
- Jack Thompson
- United States v. Extreme Associates, Inc.
Notes
- ↑ This is also known as the (S)LAPS test- [Serious] Literary, Artistic, Political, Scientific.
References
- ↑ "Three Prong Obscenity Test", Professionalism in Computing, Virginia Tech, archived from the original on February 9, 2012, retrieved June 28, 2010
- ↑ Metcalf, J. Todd (1 January 1996). "Obscenity Prosecutions in Cyberspace: The Miller Test Cannot 'Go Where No [Porn] Has Gone Before'". Washington University Law Review. 74 (2): 481–523.
- ↑ Text of the decision and dissents, from findlaw.com
- ↑ The syllabus of the case mentions only sexual conduct, but excretory functions are explicitly mentioned on page 25 of the majority opinion.
- ↑ Pope v. Illinois, 481 U.S. 497, 500-501 (1987).
- ↑ Godwin, Mike (October 2001). "Standards Issue – The Supreme Court, "community standards," and the Internet". Reason Foundation. Retrieved 11 October 2012.
- ↑ United States Department of Justice. (2021, November 9). Citizen's Guide to U.S. federal law on obscenity. Citizen's Guide to U.S. Federal Law on Obscenity, at Par. 1. Retrieved February 13, 2022, from https://www.justice.gov/criminal-ceos/citizens-guide-us-federal-law-obscenity Archived:https://web.archive.org/web/20220213222619/https://www.justice.gov/criminal-ceos/citizens-guide-us-federal-law-obscenity
- ↑ Sullivan, Kathleen (September 28, 1992). "The First Amendment Wars", The New Republic, vol. 207, no. 14, pp. 35–38.