Miller v. California: Supreme Court Defines Obscenity
Five justices agreed on a definition of obscenity — and they still couldn't quite explain it. Chief Justice Warren Burger wrote Miller v. California to replace Justice Potter Stewart's infamous non-definition: "I know it when I see it." The new three-part Miller Test asked whether average people found the work offensive, whether it lacked serious artistic value, and who exactly counts as an "average person" anyway. That last question haunted courts for decades. But here's the twist: the test was meant to restrict obscenity. Instead, it accidentally drew the map for what was legally protected.
June 21, 1973
53 years ago
Key Figures & Places
What Else Happened on June 21
Hannibal hid 40,000 soldiers in fog. Not metaphorical fog — literal morning mist clinging to the hills above Lake Trasimene, where Gaius Flaminius marched his a…
a unos 70 km al oeste del lago Trasimeno (centro de Italia) a las 11:00 aprox. (hora local) sucede un terremoto de magnitud 6,5 en la escala sismológica de Rich…
King Godomar II routed the Frankish forces at the Battle of Vézeronce, securing a temporary reprieve for the Burgundian Kingdom. By killing the Merovingian prin…
en la batalla de Vézeronce, Gundomar (rey de los burgundios) derrota a los francos.
Belisarius had 15,000 soldiers, no maps of the African coast, and a general who'd recently been relieved of command for insubordination. Not the obvious recipe …
Kaiser Friedrich Barbarossa verleiht Augsburg das Stadtrecht erneut, das der Ort als römisches Augusta Vindelicum bereits vom römischen Kaiser Hadrian im Jahr 1…
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