Today in Supreme Court History: April 7, 1969

4/7/1969: Stanley v. Georgia decided.

The Warren Court (1969)

Comments

[Thought about __ all my life]

So many signs for me that the tariffs are very good. 'But I want to attack the Hillary-type arguments against it as foolishly unprincipled and utilitarian...No one says that anything must turn out well, maybe this will all go to shit. But at least we will be finally doing the right thing and not just making Bill Gates richer.

I think Batya is unanswerably right
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4jesa3heGo

No one ever answers me on this but is this not proof that Biden is a goddam huge fool

1)The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has proposed opening over 31 million acres of public land in 11 western states for potential solar development

NOW GET THIS
2) China Controls 80% of World's Solar Panel Supply Chain. China's solar capacity is nearly double that of the EU and triple that of the US. China controls approximately 80% of the world's solar panel supply chain.

Finally , I hear Janet Yellen saying we need at least $3 Trillion a year for Climate Change and how did the above China react after Biden/Kerry utterly caved on human organ harvesting

China's growing use of coal including the LONGEST coal transporting railway - which carries 200 MILLION tons of fossil fuel 1,141 MILES annually - draws pundit outrage as western nations spend BILLIONS to push citizens to reduce carbon footprint
A Scottish journalist highlighted the incongruity between the green initiatives coming from Western countries and those coming from China
China is responsible for 33 percent of the world's greenhouse gas, but continues to power itself by coal and establish itself as a global superpower
In the US, the Biden Administration continues to propose tens of billions of dollars be allocated to green initiatives that may or may not be effective

AT a certain point in life you read stuff like this article and you just say "poor goddam self-deluded morons" 🙂

[Stupid Government Tricks]

What does any of that have to do with tariffs? But since you seem to think that matters, here, digest this. If you answer, please try to rebut what I actually wrote, not your outrage feelz and emotions. I write this as someone who thinks Trump has done a lot of good but is only about 2 on the 1-10 scale in general terms, but Biden or Harris would have been a big fat 0, since Biden doubled down on Trump's first term tariffs, tried to stick taxpayers with a trillion in student debt, and was about as corrupt as politicians can get.

This is my take on Trump's tariffs. Not on anything else he has done.
======================
Forget it, Jake, it's Trump Town.

He blew it. He put his incompetence on full display for the world to see, as bad as Biden seeing ghosts and reading teleprompter instructions. Slapdash doesn't begin to describe it.

* He doesn't understand trade deficits, that foreign investments ARE trade deficits, and good because they mean foreign investors think the US is a better investment than elsewhere.

* He doesn't understand trade balances, that they are meaningless between pairs of countries in a world of multiple trading partners.

* He doesn't understand tariffs, that they are taxes on consumers and generate more revenue for the government to spend and waste.

* He says tariffs should be high to protect American industry at consumers' expense, yet he also says he wants tariffs to be zero.

* He says tariffs should be high to compensate for foreigners lax labor, environmental, and safety regulations, yet he also says he wants tariffs to be zero.

* He says tariffs should be high to punish other countries for not stopping drug smuggling into the US, admitting the US hasn't been able to stop the same smuggling in 50 years.

* He says tariffs should be high to reduce trade deficits, yet the two are unrelated, and he added tariffs to countries with trade surpluses.

* He says tariffs should be high to replace the income tax, yet they'd have to be so high that they'd reduce revenue.

* He says he wants reciprocal tariffs, yet slaps tariffs on allies and friendly countries which already have zero tariffs on imports from the US.

* He negotiated the USMCA trade treaty with Mexico and Canada in 2020, yet unilaterally abrogated it and at least 14 other trade treaties.

* He doesn't understand "reciprocity", either what it means or that it works both ways.

* He doesn't understand trade itself as an individual transaction by voluntary parties who are both left better off, since they wouldn't trade otherwise. If he wants to limit the government to Buy America, that's the government's business. But my trades are none of the government's business. That's freedom, isn't it?

* He levied independent tariffs on 15 jurisdictions of parent countries which also got tariffs.

* He thinks Americans who buy imports from penguins need to be taxed.

* He says he wants to reduce spending, yet won't discuss Social Security, Medicare, or other mandatory spending. DOGE's few hundred billion in cuts are one-time and meaningless in the big picture.

* He doesn't understand freedom or individualism. He thinks everything people do is his business.

In other words, Trump doesn't know what he wants or expects, so whatever happens, he will declare victory, and his fanbois will say, "See, I told you so!"

He runs a real risk of beclowning himself and the GOP so thoroughly that the Democrats will take back both the House and Senate in 2026, and give Kamala the election in 2028. Remember, Trump won in 2024 by only 1.5%, against Cackling Kamala, who had never won a single primary vote in 2020 or 2024, against all the woke and DEI crap, and men beating up women in sports. That's a pathetic win.

By the way, if the Democrats take back Congress in 2026, that almost guarantees a third and successful impeachment over those 15 broken trade treaties, if nothing else. Could JD Vance be man enough to take that opportunity to distance himself from Trump and rescue the 2028 elections? I doubt it; he sold his soul to Donald Trump, and canceling that contract prematurely looks bad.

Maybe Trump can pull something out of his hat before this fiasco embeds itself in the 2026 electorate consciousness. But he hasn't got a lot of time.

[SRG2]

Worth pinning this. Well said.

[Dan Schiavetta]

Stanley v. Georgia, 394 U.S. 557 (decided April 7, 1969): First and Fourteenth Amendments prohibit criminalizing simple possession of obscene material (8mm films of “nude men and women engaging in intercourse and sodomy”) (police were searching home for evidence of criminal bookmaking) (I noticed that according to the statutory definitions, lesbians can’t possibly be “obscene” because no penis is being put anywhere)

Wilson v. Snow, 228 U.S. 217 (decided April 7, 1913): upholding old deed where property was properly sold by executrix and “worked” as requested in the Will (which included taking care of the slaves -- this was a really old Will)

Virginia v. Black, 538 U.S. 343 (decided April 7, 2003): This is the case where during oral argument the long-silent Thomas abruptly called cross-burning uniquely designed to cause fear and terrorize a population. Here O’Connor, writing the opinion, holds that Virginia statute criminalizing cross-burning with intent to intimidate does not violate First Amendment, but jury should not have been instructed that the mere fact of cross-burning was prima facie evidence of intimidation. (My only witness to cross-burning, a prank in front of an all-female dorm, had no racial dimension nor was meant to intimidate, and was objected to only by campus Christians.) Thomas dissents.

State Farm Mut. Auto. Ins. Co. v. Campbell, 538 U.S. 408 (decided April 7, 2003): $145 million in punitive damages after only $1 million in compensatory (suit against insurer for bad faith refusal to settle) violated Due Process; Court suggests that normally no more than 10:1 ratio is acceptable (shortly after this case came down I tried a case that went to a punitive damages trial and plaintiff’s attorney was careful to suggest an amount exactly ten times the compensatory award)

Delaware v. Van Arsdall, 475 U.S. 673 (decided April 7, 1986): Delaware Supreme Court vacated murder verdict because trial judge would not allow witness to be cross-examined as to agreement with prosecutor to testify in exchange for dropping drunk driving charge (which would show bias); Court agrees this was a violation of the Confrontation Clause but holds that “harmless error” analysis should have been applied instead of simple vacatur; case remanded (Delaware court held that violation was not harmless error, 524 A.2d 3)

Wells v. Rockefeller, 394 U.S. 542 (decided April 7, 1969): violation of Equal Protection to apportion state partly by population and partly by county (this was New York, where 31 districts were apportioned in the thickly populated downstate by population, and the remaining 10 by grouping together upstate counties)

Stroble v. California, 343 U.S. 181 (decided April 7, 1952): confession to murder was admissible when after arrest defendant kept confessing to anyone who would listen, both before and after retaining counsel

Kaufman v. Societe Internationale et al., 343 U.S. 156 (decided April 7, 1952): American shareholders in Swiss company which fell under German control in World War II could intervene in suit to recover assets which had been seized by the United States under the Trading with the Enemy Act (related litigation went on for years; in 1965 relatives of property expropriated by the Nazis were opposing restitution to the company, https://www.nytimes.com/1965/03/17/archives/two-relatives-of-nazi-victims-fight-payments-to-interhandel.html)

Donnelly v. United States, 228 U.S. 243 (decided April 7, 1913): White man (Donnelly) tried for murder of Native American on reservation. Written confession to the murder by Joe Dick (another Native American, deceased), properly excluded as hearsay. Court cites with approval Queen v. Hepburn, where hearsay proving a slave’s free status was excluded. In dissent, Holmes points out wryly that the confession “would have a very strong tendency to make anyone outside of a court of justice believe that Donnelly did not commit the crime”.

PacifiCare Health Systems v. Book, 538 U.S. 401 (decided April 7, 2003): dismissing RICO suit by physicians seeking reimbursement from HMO; bound by arbitration clause even though it limited damages recoverable

[apedad]

On Virginia v Black

1. I wonder if Justice Thomas would still dissent today.

2. This was about cross burning. I wonder if it's OK to burn a Star of David.

[not guilty]

The Supreme Court in Stanley v. Georgia, 394 U.S. 557, 568 (1969), ruled that the First Amendment does not allow a state to criminalize the private possession of obscene matter:

Whatever may be the justifications for other statutes regulating obscenity, we do not think they reach into the privacy of one's own home. If the First Amendment means anything, it means that a State has no business telling a man, sitting alone in his own house, what books he may read or what films he may watch.

Id., at 565. Subsequent decisions declined to extend that protection to the importation of obscene material for private use, United States v. Thirty-seven Photographs, 402 U.S. 363, 376 (1971) (plurality), or the use of the mails to deliver obscene material, United States v. Reidel, 402 U.S. 351, 355 (1971), to transport obscene material by private carriage in interstate commerce, even for the transporter's private use. United States v. Orito, 413 U.S. 139, 143 (1972), or to acquire obscene material for private use. United States v. 12 200-Ft. Reels of Film, 413 U.S. 123, 127-128 (1973).

This refusal to extend the protection afforded by Stanley led Justice Black to write in dissent that "perhaps in the future that case will be recognized as good law only when a man writes salacious books in his attic, prints them in his basement, and reads them in his living room." United States v. Thirty-seven Photographs, 402 U.S. at 382 (Black, J., dissenting).

[Dan Schiavetta]

Stanley was like Mapp v. Ohio, another obscenity case. Both times, police were searching for evidence of something else (gambling, a bomb plot) and found pornography. Not surprising. Searching a lot of homes, even if for no reason, will turn up porn.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

I believe Mapp was originally supposed to be a porn-possession case, but then they decided to focus on the 4th Amendment angle - a good choice IMHO though maybe it should have been more fully briefed.

[Dan Schiavetta]

Don King's house was bombed (at the time he was a small-time crook, not the famous boxing promoter he later became). Police got a tip that Dollree Mapp was either hiding the suspect or knew about the bombing. That's why they went in to her house.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

Don King, supporting character in con law case.

The Ali documentary said that King pressed Ali into continuing in boxing to the detriment of his health. If that's true it's not a nice thing at all.

[Dan Schiavetta]

Don King was a horrible person. Like Trump would be, if Trump grew up black and underprivileged. (No, strike that -- at least King did some good things once he got rich & famous.)

(Strike that twice -- King got where he was through taking the initiative and risks.)

[The Margrave of Azilia]

You seem like a fun guy, except that I see you going through a series of Rorshach inkblots and announcing each inkblot is a picture of Trump destroying America.

"I'm not obsessed - you're the one with all the political cartoons!"

[Dan Schiavetta]

1) Promoting boxing (or wrestling)
2) Shady business deals
3) Incredible degree of self-aggrandizement
4) Publicity hog
5) Hair as part of the image

With Trump entering us through both ears these days, and Don King popping up, the comparison suggests itself.

[wvattorney13]

I've always found Stanley to be an odd case. Take something generally allowed to be illegal but you must have a right to do it only in your own home. Is there anything else like that? Why not drugs or prostitution?

And as you noted, couldn't you simply be charged with the transport of it? As there was no printing press or movie studio in Mr. Stanley's home, the clear inference is that he transported it there.

[JoeFromtheBronx]

Why not drugs or prostitution?

It was not just "something." It was specifically something involving the "First and Fourteenth Amendments."

There is no similar right to use drugs or commit prostitution.

Still, the Supreme Court noted in Powell v. Texas that there was a state interest in stopping public drunkenness, even when the person had an irresistible urge to drink.

Many laws limit the right to drink or use drugs in public places. The Alaska Supreme Court protected the right to possess marijuana while leaving open the power to regulate it in public places. So, like Stanley, some was legal in one place but not others.

Prostitution is an economic act. It is not simply "private." Stanley did not involve the right to sell obscene materials in your home. Lawrence v. Texas protected the right to intimate association in the home. It is not that "odd" that it differentiates between that and prostitution specifically.

A wider libertarian argument can be made to expand Stanley, but its lines were not overly strange.

[wvattorney13]

"It was not just "something." It was specifically something involving the "First and Fourteenth Amendments.""

I disagree. Obscenity is not protected by the First Amendment. Full stop. But so long as you keep it at home, it is. That's what makes the case so odd

It is even stranger that the Court provides you no legal way to get it there, unlike consensual sex which naturally takes place in the home, or even prostitution which can fully take place in the home.

[David Nieporent]

It is even stranger that the Court provides you no legal way to get it there,

Produce it yourself.

[JoeFromtheBronx]

Stanley v. Georgia protected the right to possess obscene materials in the home. The case, along with Powell v. Texas (which separated drinking in public from the home), was among the two major opinions Thurgood Marshall wrote for the Warren Court.

Thurgood Marshall was not a big fan of obscenity laws, except that they allowed him to go to "movie day" and shout out quips when they still watched the films. This opinion limited obscenity to the Redrup concerns: children and unwilling viewers (which was furthered by the dubiously applied pandering concern*).

The opinion turns on legitimate state interest. Invasion of personal privacy rights does not count. Marshall thought Bowers v. Hardwick (same sex relations in the home unprotected) was wrong for that reason. He was a strong protector of privacy rights.

Marshall later applied Stanley to personal materials brought in luggage at airports. He differentiated sending such materials in the mail (though in a sealed package that seems a weak line) since that might expose children and unwilling viewers.

He joined dissents that struck down obscenity bans generally on various grounds, including vagueness. He joined the dissent in Osborne v. Ohio, applying Stanley to materials involving minors.

I think Stanley should be applied to downloading material online from the privacy of your home. The importance of the home is also noted in D.C. v. Heller, which underlines that the right to own a gun is particularly protected at home.

===

* Ginzburg v. U.S. was a particularly egregious example. Warren and Clark, in their dissent in "The Lovers" case, also largely cited advertising as a reason to justify their vote.

[ReaderY]

A note to Dan Schiavetta about Stanley -

FYI several states’ sodomy laws, based on a Victorian-era English statute passed after “buggery” was interpreted as applying only to anal sex, were interpreted as not applying to lesbian sex for exactly this reason. Georgia was one of them. The Georgia Supreme Court held in the 1939 case of Thompson v. Aldredge that the then-existing sodomy statute did not apply to cunnilingus between two women (“That the act alleged here to have been committed is just as loathsome when participated in by two women does not justify us in reading into the definition of the crime something which the lawmakers omitted.”)

It was the 1948 Kinsey report, which brought the existence of lesbianism to public attention, which finally spurred the Georgia legislature to modernize its sodomy law, in 1949, when it gave it the gender-neutral language upheld in Bowers v. Hardwick. However, the legislature apparently did not get around to modernizing Georgia’s obscenity law until after Miller v. California in the 1970s, when it adapted the approach that the Supreme Court had upheld.

[Dan Schiavetta]

Thanks.

(Being unable to do something illegal with your partner in bed — no matter how hard you try — did that make sex hotter or chillier?)

[JoeFromtheBronx]

Tax fraud in bed is a fetish in certain underground communities

[Dan Schiavetta]

You can't control what turns you on!

[John F. Carr]

From Dave Barry's 2024 year in review: "Stormy Daniels tells a New York jury in explicit detail about her encounter with Donald Trump during a 2006 celebrity golf tournament, testifying that when she came out of the bathroom in Trump’s hotel suite, he was waiting for her wearing only a T-shirt and boxer shorts, and before she could stop him he proceeded—without wearing a condom—to falsify business records."

[Dan Schiavetta]

Dave Barry is the second funniest guy alive. (#1 is Jack Handey.)

[Frank Drackman]

Wow, Stanley was a swinging dude before he got to Dunder Mifflin