Felix Frankfurter

“ We are constantly called upon to consider the alleged misconduct of a prosecutor as vitiating the fairness of a particular trial or the inflamed state of public opinion in a particular case as undermining the constitutional right to due process. Again, in the series of cases coming here from the state courts, in which due process was invoked to enfoce separation of church and state, decision certainly turned on the particularities of the specific situations before the Court. It is needless to multiply instances. ”

“ Every Term we have to examine the particular circumstances of a particular case in order to apply generalities which no one disputes. It would be equally comfortable if a general formula could determine the unfairness of a state trial for want of counsel. ”

“ In the first place, genuine pornography is almost always underworld, it doesn't come into the open. In the second, you can recognize it by the insult it offers invariably, to sex, and to the human spirit.
'Pornography is the attempt to insult sex, to do dirt on it. ”

“ The legislation must not be so vague, the language so loose, as to leave to those who have to apply it too wide a discretion for sweeping within its condemnation what is permissible expression as well as what society may permissibly prohibit. Always remembering that the widest scope of freedom is to be given to the adventurous and imaginative exercise of the human spirit, we have struck down lgis lation phrased in language intrinsically vague, unless it be responsive to the common understanding of men even though not susceptible of explicit definition. ”

“ The ultimate reason for invalidating such las is that they lead to timidity and inertia and thereby discourage the boldness of expression indispensable for a progressive society.
The New York legislation of 1954 was the product of careful lawyers who sought to meet decisions of this Court which had left no doubt that a motion-picture licensing law is not inherently outside the scope of the regulatory powers of a State under the Fourteenth Amendment. The Court does not strike the law down because of vagueness, as we struck down prior New York legislation. ”

“ While I join in the opinion of the Court, I adhere to the views I expressed in Superior Films Inc. v. Department of Education, 346 U.S. 587, 588-589, 74 S.Ct. 286, 98 L.Ed. 329, that censorship of movies is unconstitutional, since it is a form of 'previous restraint' that is as much at war with the First Amendment, made applicable to the States through the Fourteenth, as the censorship struck down in Near v. State of Minnesota ex rel. Olson, 283 U.S. 697, 51 S.Ct. 625, 75 L.Ed. 1357. If a particular movie violates a valid law, the exhibitor can be prosecuted in the usual way. ”

“ Nor is there any reason to believe that on this side of the ocean there has been a diminution in the pornographic business which years ago sought a flourishing market in some of the leading secondary schools for boys, who presumably had more means than boys in the public high schools. ”

“ Alpert, Judicial Censorship of Obscene Literature, 52 Harv.L.Rev. 40, 53 et seq. We have in the United States no counterpart of the Lord Chamberlain who is censor over England's stage. As late as 1941 only six States had systems of censorship for movies. Chafee, Free Speech in the United States (1941) , p. 540. That number has now been reduced to four [4] -Kansas, Maryland, New York, and Virginia-plus a few cities. Even in these areas, censorship of movies shown on television gives way by reason of the Federal Communications Act, 47 U.S.C.A. § 151 et seq. ”