| Quantity of Books v. Kansas | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Argued April 1–2, 1964 Decided June 22, 1964 | |
| Full case name | A Quantity of Copies of Books et al. v. Kansas |
| Citations | 378 U.S. 205 (more) 84 S. Ct. 1723; 12 L. Ed. 2d 809 |
| Argument | Oral argument |
| Opinion announcement | Opinion announcement |
| Case history | |
| Prior | Forfeiture granted, Geary District Court, unreported, 1961; order affirmed, 191 Kan. 13, 379 P. 2d 254 (Kansas Supreme Court, 1961) |
| Subsequent | cert granted, 388 U.S. 452 (1967), 87 S. Ct. 2104, 18 L. Ed. 2d 1314 |
| Holding | |
| Mass seizure of allegedly obscene works without prior adversary hearing to determine obscenity was procedurally deficient to protect First Amendment interests. Kansas Supreme Court reversed and remanded. | |
| Court membership | |
| |
| Case opinions | |
| Majority | Brennan, joined by Warren, White, Goldberg |
| Concurrence | Black, joined by Douglas |
| Concurrence | Stewart |
| Dissent | Harlan, joined by Clark |
| Laws applied | |
| U.S. Const. amends. I, XIV | |
Quantity of Books v. Kansas, 378 U.S. 205 (1964), is an in rem United States Supreme Court decision on First Amendment questions relating to the forfeiture of obscene material. By a 7–2 margin, the Court held that a seizure of the books was unconstitutional, since no hearing had been held on whether the books were obscene, and it reversed a Kansas Supreme Court decision that upheld the seizure.
The case arose several years earlier when police in Junction City, Kansas raided an adult bookstore. The state's Attorney General, William M. Ferguson, had previously filed an information with the county court listing 51 titles published by Nightstand Books as allegedly obscene; at the bookstore, 31 of those titles found, and 1,175 books were seized. These procedures were believed to be in keeping with the Supreme Court's recent Marcus v. Search Warrant decision, which held that some sort of judicial review was necessary to determine if seized material was obscene prior to seizure.
Justice William Brennan wrote for a four-justice plurality that considered the case strictly on procedural grounds, without reaching the question of the books' obscenity. It could, he said, operate as a form of prior restraint. In one of two separate concurrences, Justice Hugo Black reaffirmed his earlier blanket opposition to all legal suppression of obscenity, in which he was joined by William O. Douglas. Justice Potter Stewart said that the books in question were not hardcore pornography, which was the only material that he could consider holding to be unprotected by the First Amendment in Quantity of Books's companion case, Jacobellis v. Ohio (where he had also defined it with his oft-quoted line "I know it when I see it").
In dissent, Justice John Marshall Harlan II wrote for himself and Tom Clark in faulting Brennan's application of the precedents he relied on. He also disputed whether the procedure was truly prior restraint, since it did not review the material prior to publication. The Court, he concluded, was unfairly denying Kansas the full range of legal tools it might otherwise have had to pursue if it had decided it was an important state interest.[clarification needed]