stating the "‘elementary principle that the statute may be in part constitutional and in part unconstitutional, and that if the parts are wholly independent of each other, that this is constitutional may stand while that which is unconstitutional shall be rejected’”
How later courts described this case
- stating the "‘elementary principle that the statute may be in part constitutional and in part unconstitutional, and that if the parts are wholly independent of each other, that this is constitutional may stand while that which is unconstitutional shall be rejected’”
- holding that a moral nuisance statute with an overbroad definition of “prurient" should not have been struck down in its entirety, since the statute without the offending provision retained its effectiveness as regulation of obscenity
- stating "the elementary principle that the same statute may be in part constitutional and in part unconstitutional, and that if the parts are wholly independent of each other, that which is constitutional may stand"
- stating that one of the “cardinal rules governing federal courts [is] never to formulate a rule of constitutional law broader than is required by the precise facts to which it is to be applied ... ”
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
Justice Brennan,
with whom Justice Marshall joins,
dissenting.
We granted certiorari to consider the holding of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit that the Washington state obscenity law, Wash. Rev. Code §§7 .48A.010-7.48A.900 (1983), is substantially overbroad and therefore invalid on its face under the First Amendment because it defines “prurient” in such a way as to reach constitutionally protected material that stimulates no more than a healthy interest in sex. This statute is, in my view, unconstitutionally overbroad and therefore invalid on its face for the reasons given in my dissent in Paris Adult Theatre I v. Slaton, 413 U. S. 49, 73 (1973). I would therefore affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals.