OBSCENITY STANDARDS: Part 1
Hicklin Test (England, 1868)
Material obscene if any portion of it has a tendency "to deprave or corrupt those
whose minds are open to such immoral influences, and into whose hands a
publication of this sort may fall."
US Standards
Roth v United States (1957)
"whether to the average person, applying contemporary community standards, the
dominant theme of the material, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest."
Writing for the Court, Justice Brennan defined obscenity as "material which deals with
sex in a manner appealing to prurient interest . . . having a tendency to excite lustful
thoughts [or] as [a] shameful and morbid interest in sex."
Jacobellis v Ohio (1964)
Material must be "utterly without redeeming social value."
Justice Potter Stewart said, "I can't define pornography, but I know it when I see it."
Miller v California (1973)
Obscene if
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The average person, applying contemporary community standards, would
find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest (Roth
Test)
The work depicts, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically
defined by the applicable state law;
The work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political or
scientific value
Relevant community standards are local, not nationwide.
Community Standards of Tolerance Test for Obscenity: A History
R. v. Hicklin [1868] LR 3 QB 36
Brodie v. The Queen, [1962] S.C.R. 681
Towne Cinema Theatres Ltd. v. The Queen, [1985] 1 S.C.R. 494
R. v. Butler, [1992] 1 S.C.R. 452
Little Sisters Book and Art Emporium v. Canada (Minister of Justice) [2000] 2 S.C.R.
1120
R. v. Labaye, [2005] 3 S.C.R. 728, 2005 SCC 80
Brodie (1962)
“[The work under attack] has none of the characteristics that are often described in
judgments dealing with obscenity – dirt for dirt’s sake, the leer of the sensualist,
depravity in the mind of an author with an obsession for dirt, pornography, an appeal to a
prurient interest, etc.”
CCC Section 163
“For the purposes of this Act, any publication a dominant characteristic of which is the
undue exploitation of sex, or of sex and any one or more of the following subjects,
namely, crime, horror, cruelty and violence, shall be deemed to be obscene.”
Towne Cinema
“To determine ‘undueness’ one of the tests to be applied is whether the accepted
standards of tolerance in the contemporary Canadian community, taken as a whole, have
been exceeded. In applying the community standard of tolerance what matters is not what
Canadians think is right for themselves to see. What matters is what Canadians would not
abide other Canadians seeing because it would be beyond the contemporary Canadian
standard of tolerance to allow them to see it.”
“The trier of fact must formulate an opinion of what the contemporary Canadian
community will tolerate in order to determine ‘undueness’ by the community standards
test. The community consensus must be assessed and community level of tolerance
objectively determined. While evidence of the community standards of tolerance may
well be useful in many cases, it is not essential, for it is the opinion of the trier of fact
about the community standards of tolerance which is important.”
“…from the very beginning of this Court’s consideration of s. 159(8) ‘community
standards’ have been viewed as one measure of ‘undueness’ in the exploitation of sex.
They have never been the only measure of such undueness; still less has a breach of
community standards been treated as in itself a criminal offence. There are other ways in
which exploitation of sex might be ‘undue’. Ours is not a perfect society and it is
unfortunate but true that the community may tolerate publications that cause harm to
members of society and therefore to society as a whole. Even if, at certain times, there is
a coincidence between what is not tolerated and what is harmful to society, there is no
necessary connection between these two concepts. Thus, a legal definition of ‘undue’
must also encompass publications harmful to members of society and, therefore, to
society as a whole.” [Dickson]
“As I see it, the essential difficulty with the definition of obscenity is that ‘undueness’
must presumably be assessed in relation to consequences. It is implicit in the definition
that at some point the exploitation of sex becomes harmful to the public or at least that
public believes that to be so. It is therefore necessary for the protection of the public to
put limits on the degree of exploitation and, through the application of the community
standard test, the public is made arbiter of what is harmful to it and what is not.” [Wilson]