Redrup v. New York

Redrup v. New York, 386 U.S. 767 (1967) was a May 8, 1967 ruling by the Supreme Court of the United States, widely regarded as the end of American censorship of written fiction. Robert Redrup was a Times Square newsstand clerk who sold two of William Hamling's Greenleaf Classics paperback pulp sex novels, Lust Pool and Shame Agent, to a plainclothes police officer. He was tried and convicted in 1965.

With financial backing from Hamling, Redrup appealed his case to the Supreme Court where his conviction was overturned by 7-2. The court's final ruling affirmed that written materials that were neither sold to minors nor foisted on unwilling audiences were constitutionally protected, thereby de facto ending American censorship of written material. After this decision, the Supreme Court systematically and summarily reversed, without further opinion, scores of obscenity rulings involving paperback sex books.

See also

Wikisource has original text related to this article: Redrup v. New York

• List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 386
• List of United States Supreme Court cases by the Warren Court
• List of United States Supreme Court cases involving the First Amendment
• Roth v. United States, 354 U.S. 476 (1957)
• Miller v. California, 413 U.S. 15 (1973)

References

Further reading

• Hagle, Timothy M. (1991). "But Do They Have to See It to Know It? The Supreme Court's Obscenity and Pornography Decisions". The Western Political Quarterly (University of Utah) 44 (4): 1039–1054. doi:10.2307/448806. JSTOR 448806. 
• Kobylka, Joseph F. (1987). "A Court-Created Context for Group Litigation: Libertarian Groups and Obscenity". The Journal of Politics (Cambridge University Press) 49 (4): 1061–1078. doi:10.2307/2130784. JSTOR 2130784.