Jeffrey Rosen

In 1973 the Supreme Court established guidelines for obscenity laws that provided for the banning or regulation of materials if they were deemed patently offensive “by contemporary community standards.” The proliferation of Internet pornography has raised questions about how the community standards test can be applied to online pornography. The following viewpoint by Jeffrey Rosen was written in response to a 2002 Supreme Court ruling on the 1998 Child Online Protection Act, a federal law that attempted to protect children from Internet pornography. Rosen argues that the Supreme Court’s approach to pornography assumed a national consensus on what is or is not appropriate for teenagers and adults, but he contends that such an agreement no longer exists. Federal laws against pornography could undermine free speech on the...