Kingsley Books, Inc. v. Brown (1956)
- Docket
- 107
- Decided
- 1956-01-01
- Category
- General
Summary
Question: Did the civil procedure as laid out by New York statute violate the booksellers' rights under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment by not allowing for a criminal trial before imposing an injunction and destroying the obscene material? Conclusion: No. In a 5–4 opinion authored by Justice Felix Frankfurter, the Court concluded that the civil procedure complied with the requirements of due process. Justice Frankfurter noted that the procedural safeguards were not significantly different from many state criminal misdemeanor procedures, nor were the penalties any more severe. The opinion also reaffirmed the existing notion that the constitutional protection of speech does not extend to obscene material.