The Judicial Branch of the Federal Government by Brian Duignan

Author:Brian Duignan [Duignan, Brian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Kids, Français; Español and More, Reference, School Tools, Nonfiction, Social & Cultural Studies, Political Science, Government, Local Government
ISBN: 9781615300372
Publisher: Britannica Educational Publishing
Published: 2009-10-01T04:00:00+00:00

OBSCENITY

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THE LEGAL CONCEPT OF OBSCENITY

Obscenity is a legal concept used to characterize certain (particularly sexual) material as offensive to the public sense of decency. A wholly satisfactory definition of obscenity is elusive, however, largely because what is considered obscene is often, like beauty, in the eye of the beholder. Although the term originally referred to things considered repulsive, it has since acquired a more specifically sexual meaning.

Legal restrictions on the content of literature and works of visual art have existed since ancient times. Traditionally, however, governments were much more concerned with sedition, heresy, and blasphemy, and it was not until relatively modern times that sexuality became a major preoccupation of political and religious authorities. One of the first systematic efforts to regulate literature was undertaken by the Roman Catholic Church, which banned heretical works as early as the 4th century. By the Middle Ages the list of banned works had grown dramatically. In 1542 Pope Paul III established the Sacred Congregation of the Roman Inquisition—the precursor of the modern Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith—one of whose responsibilities was the suppression of heretical and immoral books. In 1559 Pope Paul IV published the Index Auctorum et Librorum Prohibitorum, a comprehensive list of forbidden books that went through numerous editions before it was abolished in 1966. Immoral works also were suppressed in Protestant countries such as England, where, prior to the 18th century, restrictions were applied almost exclusively to antireligious or seditious acts or publications, rather than to obscene material in the modern sense.

Modern obscenity law emerged as a direct response to social and technological changes—particularly the development of the printing press in the 15th century—that permitted the wide and easy distribution of what was then considered sexually explicit material. By the 17th century such books and prints had become widely available throughout Europe; governments and church authorities responded by arresting and prosecuting publishers and distributors. A similar sequence of events occurred in Japan, where the development of colour woodblock printing ended up soon creating a sizable industry in erotic pictures. In 1722 the Japanese government introduced the first of several edicts against unlicensed materials, whether erotic or political.

In the early 18th century the temporal courts of England failed to pass judgment on defendants charged with obscenity because there was no law against the publication of such material. The offense of obscene libel subsequently developed to enable the prosecution of people of “wicked and depraved mind and disposition” for publishing materials that corrupted the morals of society by creating “lustful desires.” In the 1720s bookseller Edmund Curll became the first person to be convicted on a charge of obscenity in England in the common-law (as opposed to the ecclesiastical) courts, for his publication of a new edition of Venus in the Cloister; or, The Nun in Her Smock, a mildly pornographic work that had been written several decades earlier; his sentence, a fine and one hour in the pillory, was delayed because no punishment was then specified in the law.

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