Ginzburg v. United States

383 U.S. 463 (1966)

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Nature of the Case

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Facts

Ginzburg (D) published EROS, a hard-cover magazine of expensive format; Liaison, a bi-weekly newsletter; and The Housewife's Handbook on Selective Promiscuity (hereinafter the Handbook), a short book. The issue of EROS specified in the indictment, Vol. 1, No. 4, contains 15 articles and photo-essays on the subject of love, sex, and sexual relations. The specified issue of Liaison, Vol. 1, No. 1, contains a prefatory 'Letter from the Editors' announcing its dedication to 'keeping sex an art and preventing it from becoming a science.' The remainder of the issue consists of digests of two articles concerning sex and sexual relations which had earlier appeared in professional journals and a report of an interview with a psychotherapist who favors the broadest license in sexual relationships. D was indicted and tried on federal obscenity charges. Besides testimony as to the merit of the material, there was abundant evidence to show that each of the accused publications was originated or sold as stock in trade of the sordid business of pandering - 'the business of purveying textual or graphic matter openly advertised to appeal to the erotic interest of their customers.' A judge sitting without a jury in the District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania convicted D and three corporations controlled by him upon all 28 counts of an indictment charging a violation of the federal obscenity statute, 18 U.S.C. 1461 (1964 ed.). Each count alleged that a resident of the Eastern District received mailed matter, either one of three publications challenged as obscene, or advertising telling how and where the publications might be obtained. The Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit affirmed.