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''United States v. 12 200-ft. Reels of Film'', , was an ''in rem'' case decided by the United States Supreme Court that considered the question of whether the First Amendment required that citizens be allowed to import obscene material for their personal and private use at home, which was already held to be protected several years earlier. By a 5–4 margin, the Court held that it did not. This case was very similar to ''United States v. Thirty-seven Photographs'', a case the Court had heard two years earlier. It began when the films, and other visual and textual material with predominant explicit sexual content, were seized by customs agents from Paladini, a California man returning from Mexico. Federal law at the time prohibited the import of any material that might be judged to be obscene. Paladini challenged the forfeiture proceedings the government initiated, on the grounds that he intended the material for his personal use in the privacy of his own home, an activity the Court had ruled was protected under the First Amendment in ''Stanley v. Georgia''. Thus, he argued, he had a right to obtain such material abroad for that purpose. After a district court panel agreed with him and declared the statute unconstitutional, the case went to the Supreme Court directly. Its opinion was one of four obscenity cases handed down, along with ''Miller v. California'', in which the Court announced a new standard of obscenity for the first time since ''Roth v. United States'' 17 years before. By a 5–4 margin, the Court held that the statute was constitutional, but it also ordered the district court to review the material under its new standard and consider whether it was still obscene. Chief Justice Warren Burger wrote for the majority, reaffirming a similar holding in ''Thirty-seven Photographs'' that the right to possess something in one's home which might otherwise be unlawful outside of it did not give rise to a right to import it. William O. Douglas wrote a lengthy dissent, responding as much to the majority holding in ''Miller'', arguing that history showed obscenity laws were not vigorously enforced at the time the Bill of Rights was adopted and thus could not be justified on traditionalist grounds. William Brennan wrote a shorter dissent, joined by the other two justices, calling the statute overbroad. ==Background of the case== For most of American history, literary and artistic works depicting, or even alluding to, sexual acts and topics or using profane language had been banned from publication or distribution, often by both confiscation of the works themselves and criminal prosecution of all individuals involved, following the traditions of English common law on obscenity and statutes at the state and federal levels. At the same time, demand for such materials continued, and the laws were often widely flouted. No defendant or claimant in such an action had ever persuaded a court to entertain the argument that the First Amendment's guarantees of free speech and free expression barred them. That began to change during the 20th century, in response to social and cultural trends of greater tolerance for literature and art that depicted such proscribed material. In the landmark 1933 case ''United States v. One Book Called Ulysses'', Judge John M. Woolsey of the Southern District of New York ruled that James Joyce's novel ''Ulysses'', chapters of which had been held obscene over a decade earlier when published in a literary review, could not be barred from the United States purely on the basis of its language and content without considering its literary merit.〔''United States v. One Book Called Ulysses'', 5 F.Supp. 182 (S.D.N.Y., 1933).〕 Second Circuit judges Learned and Augustus Hand upheld Woolsey on appeal,〔''(United States v. One Book Entitled Ulysses, by James Joyce )'', 72 F.2d 705 (2nd Cir., 1934)〕 and the book, considered a masterpiece of modernist literature, could be freely published and sold. Censorship battles continued in the next decades over other works of literature and art, such as ''Lady Chatterley's Lover'', expanding to include films. In 1957, the Supreme Court finally considered a case arising from an obscenity prosecution, ''Roth v. United States''.〔''Roth v. United States'', .〕 William Brennan wrote for a 6–3 majority that upheld the criminal conviction but abandoned the century-old Hicklin test in favor of a narrower definition of obscenity. It did not settle the issue, however, and the Warren Court had to hear more cases arising from subsequent prosecutions in the next decade, during which the Sexual Revolution began a more direct challenge to social mores on the issue. In some of those cases, like ''Memoirs v. Massachusetts'', the justices realized their ''Roth'' standard was inadequate, but they could not agree on a new one.〔''Memoirs v. Massachusetts'', .〕 The search for a workable legal definition of obscenity led to Potter Stewart's famous line "I know it when I see it" in ''Jacobellis v. Ohio''.〔''Jacobellis v. Ohio'', .〕 Other Court decisions restricted the scope under which obscenity could be suppressed. ''Freedman v. Maryland'' held that local film boards could not ban films, effectively eliminating them, and that they had to approve a film within a specified period of time.〔''Freedman v. Maryland'', .〕 In ''Stanley v. Georgia'', the Court held that possession of obscene material in the privacy of the home was constitutionally protected as well.〔''Stanley v. Georgia'', .〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「United States v. 12 200-ft. Reels of Film」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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