Constitutional Law II

Obscenity


Under the Miller test, speech is obscenity and therefore unprotected if it:

  1. Appeals to the prurient interest of the average person in the community,
  2. Is patently offensive to the community as defined by statute, and
  3. Lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.

This includes child pornography as long as it involves actual children and not just drawings of children.

  • The purpose of the protection is to protect children from the harm in the creation of the pornography, and this is not implicated if it is drawn or computer-generated.