Ginzburg v. United States

Ginzburg v. United States
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued December 7, 1965 Decided March 21, 1966
Full case name	Ralph Ginzburg et al, Petitioner, versus United States.
Citations	383 U.S. 463 (more) 86 S. Ct. 942; 16 L. Ed. 2d 31
Case history
Prior	United States v. Ginzburg, 224 F. Supp. 129 (E.D. Pa. 1963); affirmed, 338 F.2d 12 (3d Cir. 1964).
Subsequent	Rehearing denied, 384 U.S. 934 (1966); sentence upheld on remand, United States v. Ginzburg, 436 F.2d 1386 (3d Cir. 1971); cert. denied, 403 U.S. 931 (1971); rehearing denied, 404 U.S. 875 (1971).
Holding
Evidence such as advertisements that publications were deliberately presented and commercially exploited as erotic is allowable as part of considering if that material is obscene.
Court membership
Chief Justice Earl Warren Associate Justices Hugo Black · William O. Douglas Tom C. Clark · John M. Harlan II William J. Brennan Jr. · Potter Stewart Byron White · Abe Fortas
Case opinions
Majority	Brennan, joined by Warren, Clark, White, Fortas
Dissent	Black
Dissent	Douglas
Dissent	Harlan
Dissent	Stewart
Laws applied
First Amendment, Comstock laws
Superseded by
Miller v. California, 413 U.S. 15 (1973)

Ginzburg v. United States, 383 U.S. 463 (1966), was a decision by the United States Supreme Court involving the application of the First Amendment to Federal obscenity laws. One of a trio of cases (with Memoirs v. Massachusetts and Mishkin v. New York released on the same day), Ginzburg was part of the Supreme Court's attempt to refine the definitions of obscenity after the landmark 1957 case Roth v. United States.^[1]