Writing the majority opinion in this case was Justice Clarence Thomas. He defended Congress’s attempt to tone down the Communications Decency Act, which was declared unconstitutional in Reno v. American Civil Liberties

(C) Taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value for minors.

Union. While the CDA covered all aspects of the Internet including email, COPA applies only to material on the World Wide Web made “for commercial purposes.” Also, COPA only restricts “material that is harmful to minors” unlike the CDA, which covered the broader realm of all “indecent and patently offensive communications.” This opinion of the court asserted that COPA, by defining material harmful to minors in a parallel fashion to the court’s definition of obscenity, would not restrict the wide range material Web in the way the Communications Decency Act had. In drawing up COPA, Congress used Miller v. California as a basis to define material harmful to minor as:

Justice Stevens also responds to the concurring opinion of Justice Breyer, who he says, “seeks to avoid the problem by effectively reading the phrase ‘contemporary national standards’ into the statue.” Stevens points out that Breyer is “contradicted by the clear text of the statute, which directs jurors to consider ‘community’ standards.” As determined in Miller, it is futile to expect jurors to act on national rather than community standards. This is due to the fact that “[a] juror is entitled to draw on his own knowledge of the view of the average person in the community or vicinage from which he comes for making the required determination” (Hamling).

(B) Depicts, describes, or represents, in a manner patently offensive with respect to minors, an actual or simulated sexual act or sexual contact, an actual or simulated normal or perverted sexual act, or a lewd exhibition of the genitals or post-pubescent female breast; and

Some topics in this essay:
Court Appeals, Miller California, Justice Stevens, Jenkins Georgia, Representatives Report, FCC Sable, Justice Thomas, Stevens Breyer, Supreme Court, Hamling Sable, community standards, justice thomas, opinion justice, national standard, court appeals, concurring opinion, hamling sable, restrict access, justice stevens, contemporary community, civil liberties union, appeals third circuit, american civil liberties, world wide web, material world wide,