[1] Hand received a recess appointment from President Calvin Coolidge on May 19, 1927, to a seat on the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit vacated by Judge Charles Merrill Hough.

1934), in which he ruled that contraceptives, when imported by a licensed physician, were not immoral or obscene devices banned under the Comstock Law provisions incorporated into the Tariff Act of 1930.

Its design, in our opinion, was not to prevent the importation, sale, or carriage by mail of things which might intelligently be employed by conscientious and competent physicians for the purpose of saving life or promoting the well being of their patients.

[2] Hand's opinion also displayed a historical perspective of the harm of overzealous censorship:Art certainly cannot advance under compulsion to traditional forms, and nothing in such a field is more stifling to progress than limitation of the right to experiment with a new technique.

In 1946, Hand was temporarily assigned to a three-judge panel of the New York Southern District Court for the U.S. government's antitrust case against the eight largest movie distributors.

1946), significantly altered the motion picture industry in the United States, by forbidding the distributors from colluding with movie theaters in such anti-competitive licensing practices as price-fixing.