Simon Stern is a professor of law and English and the director of the Centre for Innovation Law & Policy at University of Toronto. He has published articles and book chapters on obscenity, copyright, criminal procedure, legal fictions and the history of the common law. He earned his bachelor’s degree from Yale University, a Ph.D. in English from University of California Berkeley and his law degree from Yale. While in law school he was Editor-in-Chief of the Yale Journal of Law & the Humanities. See more of his biography on the University of Toronto website.
More Articles from this Author
Fanny Hill
The book Fanny Hill was the focus of one of the earliest obscenity cases in the U.S. In 1966 the Court ruled the book was not obscene in Memoirs v. Massachusetts.
Manual Enterprises v. Day (1962)
In Manual Enterprises v. Day (1962) the Supreme Court held that three physique magazines featuring nudity were not obscene and could not be barred from the mails.
Memoirs v. Massachusetts (1966)
In Memoirs v. Massachusetts (1966), the Supreme Court revisited its obscenity test that an obscene work must be “utterly without redeeming social value.”
The Catcher in the Rye
The Catcher in the Rye is one of the most controversial novels in recent U.S. history. Schools have banned and restricted the book for its profanity and sexual content.
Thomas Bowdler
Thomas Bowdler edited Shakespeare’s plays to ensure that they were family-friendly. Bowdler focused his efforts on revising sexual references and blasphemy.
Ulysses
The book Ulysses led to an obscenity trial in 1933 in which a district judge, addressing First Amendment freedom of expression, refused to declare the book obscene.