Artistic merit

[1] The first expert witness was Philip Moeller, of the Theatre Guild, who interpreted Ulysses using the Freudian method of unveiling the subconscious mind, which prompted one of the judges to ask him to "speak in a language that the court could understand".

[2] The final witness was English novelist, lecturer, and critic John Cowper Powys, who declared that Ulysses was a "beautiful piece of work in no way capable of corrupting the minds of young girls".

[2] The editors were found guilty under laws associated with the Comstock Act of 1873, which made it illegal to circulate materials deemed obscene in the U.S. mail, incurred a $100 fine, and were forced to cease publishing Ulysses in The Little Review.

Another important obscenity trial occurred 1960 in Britain, when the full unexpurgated edition of D. H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover was published by Penguin Books.

Several academic critics and experts of diverse kinds, including E. M. Forster, Helen Gardner, Richard Hoggart, Raymond Williams, Norman St John-Stevas and John Robinson, Anglican bishop of Woolwich, were called as witnesses for the defence, and the verdict, delivered on 2 November 1960, was "not guilty".