Abstract
During the one hundred and fifty years after the adoption of the first amendment, the United States Supreme Court had no occasion to pass on the constitutionlality of laws which made obsenity a crime. Since the mid-1950's, however, the Court has been deluged with obscenity cases, and in that relatively short period of time it has confronted the principal questions relating to the problem. In attempting to define obscenity the Court has unfortunately failed to provide adequate guidelines for determining whether a work is obscene and has thus left inferior courts in a state approaching mass confusion.