Smith v. California (361 U.S. 147)/Concurrence Frankfurter

by Felix Frankfurter

United States Supreme Court

361 U.S. 147

Smith  v.  California

 Argued: Oct. 20, 1959. --- Decided: Dec 14, 1959

Mr. Justice FRANKFURTER, concurring.

The appellant was convicted of violating the city ordinance of Los Angeles prohibiting possession of obscene books in a bookshop. His conviction was affirmed by the highest court of California to which he could appeal and it is the judgment of that court that we are asked to reverse. Appellant claims three grounds of invalidity under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. He urges the invalidity of the ordinance as an abridgment of the freedom of speech which the guarantee of 'liberty' of the Fourteenth Amendment safeguards against state action, and this for the reason that California law holds a bookseller criminally liable for possessing an obscene book, wholly apart from any scienter on his part regarding the book's obscenity. The second constitutional infirmity urged by appellant is the exclusion of appropriately offered testimony through duly qualified witnesses regarding the prevailing literary standards and the literary and moral criteria by which books relevantly comparable to the book in controversy are deemed not obscene. This exclusion deprived the appellant, such is the claim, of important relevant testimony bearing on the issue of obscenity and therefore restricted him in making his defense. The appellant's ultimate contention is that the questioned book is not obscene and that a bookseller's possession of it could not be forbidden.

The Court does not reach, and neither do I, the issue of obscenity. The Court disposes of the case exclusively by sustaining the appellant's claim that the 'liberty' protected by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment precludes a State from making the dissemination of obscene books an offense merely because a book in a bookshop is found to be obscene without some proof of the bookseller's knowledge touching the obscenity of its contents.

The Court accepts the settled principle of constitutional law that traffic in obscene literature may be outlawed as a crime. But it holds that one cannot be made amenable to such criminal outlawry unless he is chargeable with knowledge of the obscenity. Obviously the Court is not holding that a bookseller must familiarize himself with the contents of every book in his shop. No less obviously, the Court does not hold that a bookseller who insulates himself against knowledge about an offending book is thereby free to maintain an emporium for smut. How much or how little awareness that a book may be found to be obscene suffices to establish scienter, or what kind of evidence may satisfy the how much or the how little, the Court leaves for another day.

iI am no friend of deciding a case beyond what the immediate controversy requires, particularly when the limits of constitutional power are at stake. On the other hand, a case before this Court is not just a case. Inevitably its disposition carries implications and gives directions beyond its particular facts. Were the Court holding that this kind of prosecution for obscenity requires proof of the guilty mind associated with the concept of crimes deemed infamous, that would be that and no further elucidation would be needed. But if the requirement of scienter in obscenity cases plays a role different from the normal role of mens rea in the definition of crime, a different problem confronts the Court. If, as I assume, the requirement of scienter in an obscenity prosecution like the one before us does not mean that the bookseller must have read the book or must substantially know its contents on the one hand, nor on the other that he can exculpate himself by studious avoidance of knowledge about its contents, then, I submit, invalidating an obscenity statute because a State dispenses altogether with the requirement of scienter does require some indication of the scope and quality of scienter that is required. It ought at least to be made clear, and not left for future litigation, that the Court's decision in its practical effect is not intended to nullify the conceded power of the State to prohibit booksellers from trafficking in obscene literature.

Of course there is an important difference in the scope of the power of a State to regulate what feeds the belly and what feeds the brain. The doctrine of United States v. Balint, 258 U.S. 250, 42 S.Ct. 301, 66 L.Ed. 604, has its appropriate limits. The rule that scienter is not required in prosecutions for so-called public welfare offenses is a limitation on the general principle that awareness of what one is doing is a prerequisite for the infliction of punishment. See Morissette v. United States, 342 U.S. 246, 72 S.Ct. 240, 96 L.Ed. 288. The balance that is struck between this vital principle and the overriding public menace inherent in the trafficking in noxious food and drugs cannot be carried over in balancing the vital role of free speech as against society's interest in dealing with pornography. On the other hand, the constitutional protection of non-obscene speech cannot absorb the constitutional power of the States to deal with obscenity. It would certainly wrong them to attribute to Jefferson or Madison a doctrinaire absolutism that would bar legal restriction against obscenity as a denial of free speech. ^[1] We have not yet been told that all laws against defamation and against inciting crime by speech, see Fox v. State of Washington, 1915, 236 U.S. 273, 35 S.Ct. 383, 59 L.Ed. 573, are unconstitutional as impermissible curbs upon unrestrictable utterance. We know this was not Jefferson's view, any more than it was the view of Holmes and Brandeis, JJ., the originating architects of our prevailing constitutional law protective of freedom of speech.

Accordingly, the proof of scienter that is required to make prosecutions for obscenity constitutional cannot be of a nature to nullify for all practical purposes the power of the State to deal with obscenity. Out of regard for the State's interest, the Court suggests an unguiding, vague standard for establishing 'awareness' by the bookseller of the contents of a challenged book in contradiction of his disclaimer of knowledge of its contents. A bookseller may, of course, be well aware of the nature of a book and its appeal without having opened its cover, or, in any true sense, having knowledge of the book. As a practical matter therefore the exercise of the constitutional right of a State to regulate obscenity will carry with it some hazard to the dissemination by a bookseller of non-obscene literature. Such difficulties or hazards are inherent in many domains of the law for the simple reason that law cannot avail itself of factors ascertained quantitatively or even wholly impersonally.

The uncertainties pertaining to the scope of scienter requisite for an obscenity prosecution and the speculative proof that the issue is likely to entail, are considerations that reinforce the right of one charged with obscenity-a right implicit in the very nature of the legal concept of obscenity-to enlighten the judgment of the tribunal, be it the jury or as in this case the judge, regarding the prevailing literary and moral community standards and to do so through qualified experts. It is immaterial whether the basis of the exclusion of such testimony is irrelevance, or the incompetence of experts to testify to such matters. The two reasons coalesce, for community standards or the psychological or physiological consequences of questioned literature can as a matter of fact hardly be established except through experts. Therefore, to exclude such expert testimony is in effect to exclude as irrelevant evidence that goes to the very essence of the defense and therefore to the constitutional safeguards of due process. The determination of obscenity no doubt rests with judge or jury. Of course the testimony of experts would not displace judge or jury in determining the ultimate question whether the particular book is obscene, any more than the testimony of experts relating to the state of the art in patent suits determines the patentability of a controverted device.

There is no external measuring rod for obscenity. Neither, on the other hand, is its ascertainment a merely subjective reflection of the taste or moral outlook of individual jurors or individual judges. Since the law through its functionaries is 'applying contemporary community standards' in determining what constitutes obscenity, Roth v. United States, 354 U.S. 476, 489, 77 S.Ct. 1304, 1311, 1 L.Ed.2d 1498, it surely must be deemed rational, and therefore relevant to the issue of obscenity, to allow light to be shed on what those 'contemporary community standards' are. Their interpretation ought not to depend solely on the necessarily limited, hit-or-miss, subjective view of what they are believed to be by the individual juror or judge. It bears repetition that the determination of obscenity is for juror or judge not on the basis of his personal upbringing or restricted reflection or particular experience of life, but on the basis of 'contemporary community standards.' Can it be doubted that there is a great difference in what is to be deemed obscene in 1959 compared with what was deemed obscene in 1859? The difference derives from a shift in community feeling regarding what is to be deemed prurient or not prurient by reason of the effects attributable to this or that particular writing. Changes in the intellectual and moral climate of society, in part doubtless due to the views and findings of specialists, afford shifting foundations for the attribution. What may well have been consonant 'with mid-Victorian morals, does not seem to me to answer to the understanding and morality of the present time.' United States v. Kennerley, D.C., 209 F. 119, 120. This was the view of Judge Learned Hand decades ago reflecting an atmosphere of propriety much closer to mid-Victorian days than is ours. Unless we disbelieve that the literary, psychological or moral standards of a community can be made fruitful and illuminating subjects of inquiry by those who give their life to such inquiries, it was violative of 'due process' to exclude the constitutionally relevant evidence proffered in this case. The importance of this type of evidence in prosecutions for obscenity has been impressively attested by the recent debates in the House of Commons dealing with the insertion of such a provision in the enactment of the Obscene Publications Act, 1959, 7 & 8 Eliz. 2, Ch. 66 ^[2] (see 597 Parliamentary Debates, H.Comm., No. 36 (December 16, 1958) cols. 1009-1010, 1042-1043; 604 Parliamentary Debates, H.Comm., No. 100 (April 24, 1959), col. 803), as well as by the most considered thinking on this subject in the proposed Model Penal Code of the American Law Institute. See A.L.I. Model Penal Code, Tentative Draft No. 6 (1957), § 207.10 ^[3] For the reasons I have indicated, I would make the right to introduce such evidence a requirement of due process in obscenity prosecutions.

Notes

1. The publication of obscene printed matter was clearly established as a common-law offense in England in 1927 by the case of Rex v. Curl, 2 Str. 788, which overruled Reg. v. Read, (1708) 11 Mod. 142, where it had been held that such offenses were exclusively within the jurisdiction of the ecclesiastical courts. See also Rex v. Wilkes, (1770), 4 Burr. 2527. The common-law liability was carried across the Atlantic before the United States was established and appears early in the States. In 1786, in New York, a copyright act specifically stated that 'nothing in this Act shall * * * authorise any Person or Persons to * * * publish any Book * * * that may be profane, treasonable, defamatory, or injurious to Government, Morals or Religion.' An Act to Promote Literature, Act of April 29, 1786, c. LIV, § IV, 1 Laws of New York (Jones and Varick) (1777-1789) 321. In Pennsylvania, in 1815, a prosecution was founded on common-law liability. Commonwealth v. Sharpless, 2 Serg. & R. 91. And in Maryland, when a statute regulating obscene publications was enacted in 1853, it was recited that 'although in the judgment of the Legislature, such advertisements and publications are contra bonos mores, and punishable by the common law, it is desirable that the common law in this regard be re-enacted and enforced; * * *' Act of May 16, 1853, Md.Laws 1853, c. 183.
2. Section 4 of this Act provides:
3. Subsection (2) of this draft section provides in part:

'* * * In any prosecution for an offense under this section evidence shall be admissible to show:

'(a) the character of the audience for which the material was designed or to which it was directed;

'(b) what the predominant appeal of the material would be for ordinary adults or a special audience, and what effect, if any, it would probably have no behavior of such people;

'(c) artistic, literary, scientific, educational or other merits of the material;

'(d) the degree of public acceptance of the material in this country;

'(e) appeal to prurient interest, or absence thereof, in advertising or other promotion of the material;

'Expert testimony and testimony of the author, creator or publisher relating to factors entering into the determination of the issue of obscenity shall be admissible.'