December 24, 2025
A Single Line In a 1964 Supreme Court Case Opened The Door To Rogue Leftist Judges
By Arnold Cusmariu
Jacobellis v. Ohio is a 1964 censorship case that ultimately reached the United States Supreme Court, which decided in favor of the plaintiff. This all came about because blue noses in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, evidently had nothing better to do than throw obscenity charges at movie theater manager Nico Jacobellis for showing Louis Malle’s The Lovers (1958), starring Jeanne Moreau. That case still matters today because of a single line in the case, which gave leftist justices permission to make the law up as they go along.
We are likely to remember the case today because of a comment (which he later regretted) that Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart made in stating his concurring opinion:
I shall not attempt further to define the kind of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description (of pornography), and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in that case is not that.
So, why is this case interesting, and how can a philosopher make a useful contribution?
The first step is to cast information as a logically sound argument. Capturing Stewart’s comments in argument form yields this:
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2025/12/a_single_line_in_a_1964_supreme_court_case_opened_the_door_to_rogue_leftist_judges.html
