John Marshall Harlan II

“ The circumstance that places the Commission's permissible procedures on the same constitutional level as the illustrations just given is the fact that in each instance the courts are open to the person affected, and that any material, however questionable, may be freely sponsored, circulated, read, or viewed until judicially condemned.
In essence what the Court holds is that these publishers or their distributors need not, with respect to any material challenged by the Commission, vindicate their right to its protection in order to bring the Constitution to their aid. ”

“ Three reasons, as I understand the Court's opinion, are given for holding the particular procedures adopted by the Rhode Island Commission under this statute, though not the statute itself, unconstitutional: (1) the Commission's activities, carried on under color of state law, amount to a scheme of governmental censorship; (2) its procedures lack adequate safeguards to protect nonobscene material against suppression; and (3) the group's operations in the field of youth morality may entail depriving the adult public of access to constitutionally protected material. ”

“ This Rhode Island Commission was formed for the laudable purpose of combatting juvenile delinquency. While there is as yet no consensus of scientific opinion on the causal relationship between youthful reading or viewing of 'the obscene' and delinquent behavior, see Green, Obscenity, Censorship, and Juvenile Delinquency, 14 U. of Toronto L.J. 229 (1962) , Rhode Island's approach to the problem is not without respectable support, see S.Rep.No.2381, 84th Cong., 2d Sess. ”