A Summary Of Andrew Koppleman’S Essay ‘D Obscenity Cause Moral Harm?
A Summary of Andrew Koppleman’s Essay ‘DOES OBSCENITY CAUSE MORAL HARM?’
Koppleman’s essay attempts to look at the obscenity law what he calls the ‘obscenity doctrine’ and its usage of the phrase ‘moral harm’. He criticizes the law as he feels that it is too crude and is not workable hence it should be abandoned. Koppleman also believes that the fundamentals of the law have never really been addressed adequately and what the law seeks to protect seems to be misunderstood in some sense. Koppleman takes the side of the conservatives over the liberals and attempts to present an argument that holds both viewpoints but does justice to the conservative argument.
He examines the convoluted nature of the law by looking at the first amendment of the US Constitution that refers to freedom of speech, press etc. Obscenity law seems to be the only one of all the restrictions against freedom of speech that is to do with the intrinsic evil nature of a message, that it doesn’t necessarily incite a certain action, but looks at preventing certain thoughts.
According to Koppleman’s essay obscenity law deals with sexual and erotic content and the probability of it influencing such thoughts and appealing to prurient interests. The existing law for determining whether a publication is obscene( laid down in Miller v. California) is:
a) whether the average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest; (b) whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law; and (c) whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.
He looks at restrictions on sexually explicit literature as violating the first amendment and the Modern First Amendment theories, and citing examples of Warren and William Brennan, and states that the obscenity law is ignored or the state interests...
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