Miller Test Born: Supreme Court Defines Obscenity
Five justices agreed on a definition of obscenity — and they still couldn't quite explain it. Chief Justice Warren Burger wrote Miller v. California to replace Justice Potter Stewart's infamous non-definition: "I know it when I see it." The new three-part Miller Test asked whether average people found the work offensive, whether it lacked serious artistic value, and who exactly counts as an "average person" anyway. That last question haunted courts for decades. But here's the twist: the test was meant to restrict obscenity. Instead, it accidentally drew the map for what was legally protected.
June 21, 1973
53 years ago
Key Figures & Places
What Else Happened on June 21
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King Godomar II routed the Frankish forces at the Battle of Vézeronce, securing a temporary reprieve for the Burgundian Kingdom. By killing the Merovingian prin…
Belisarius had 15,000 soldiers, no maps of the African coast, and a general who'd recently been relieved of command for insubordination. Not the obvious recipe …
Külüg Khan ascended the throne as the seventh Khagan of the Mongol Empire and third Emperor of the Yuan dynasty, ending a period of succession instability. His …
France had already lost Italy once. Now they lost it again — badly. At Landriano, a small town southeast of Milan, Spanish imperial forces under Antonio de Leyv…
Oda Nobunaga was mid-tea ceremony when his own general's army surrounded the temple. Akechi Mitsuhide — trusted, decorated, given no obvious reason to betray — …
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