It began when the films, and other visual and textual material with predominant explicit sexual content, were seized by customs agents from Paladini, a California man returning from Mexico.

Paladini challenged the forfeiture proceedings the government initiated, on the grounds that he intended the material for his personal use in the privacy of his own home, an activity the Court had ruled was protected under the First Amendment in Stanley v. Georgia.

William O. Douglas wrote a lengthy dissent, responding as much to the majority holding in Miller, arguing that history showed obscenity laws were not vigorously enforced at the time the Bill of Rights was adopted and thus could not be justified on traditionalist grounds.

In the landmark 1933 case United States v. One Book Called Ulysses, Judge John M. Woolsey of the Southern District of New York ruled that James Joyce's novel Ulysses, chapters of which had been held obscene over a decade earlier when published in a literary review, could not be barred from the United States purely on the basis of its language and content without considering its literary merit.

[1] Second Circuit judges Learned and Augustus Hand upheld Woolsey on appeal,[2] and the book, considered a masterpiece of modernist literature, could be freely published and sold.

[3] William Brennan wrote for a 6–3 majority that upheld the criminal conviction but abandoned the century-old Hicklin test in favor of a narrower definition of obscenity.

In October 1969, Milton Luros, an adult-magazine publisher from Southern California, had challenged the seizure of the photographs, depicting naked heterosexual couples in various sexual positions, on his return to Los Angeles from Europe.

[12] In separate concurrences, John Marshall Harlan II defended the statute against Luros's claim it was overbroad[13] and Potter Stewart indicated his disagreement with the majority holding that Stanley did not extend to importing obscene material.

Customs agents inspecting his belongings discovered "movie films, color slides, photographs, and other printed and graphic material" of a possibly obscene nature, and confiscated them, without charging Paladini.

Thomas Kuchel, recently defeated in his re-election bid for his U.S. Senate seat from California, argued the case for the claimant at rehearing, by invitation of the Court.

In Miller v. California, it succeeded, where it had failed seven years earlier in Memoirs v. Massachusetts, producing a new standard for obscenity that superseded the 1957 Roth v. United States holding.

At length, citing from histories of the era, he argued that, at the time of the country's founding, writers like Benjamin Franklin and John Cleland had enjoyed far greater freedom to write about sexual topics than even current law now allowed.

Congress could, Burger admitted, allow the transmission and import of such materials with appropriate security measures to prevent unwilling recipients or children from being exposed to them, two legitimate state interests Stanley had recognized.

[22] Having dealt with the major issue, Burger added an afterthought, observing "that it is extremely difficult to control the uses to which obscene material is put once it enters this country" since it was by then technologically possible to make many copies very quickly and cheaply of a single original.

"[23] "I know of no constitutional way by which a book, tract, paper, postcard, or film may be made contraband because of its contents", Douglas began, reiterating the opposition to obscenity laws he had stated in many opinions over the preceding years.

"[25] Histories of the era, Douglas wrote, show that at the time of the Constitution's adoption many sexually frank works such as Fanny Hill circulated widely, with little censorship or prosecution.

"[26] In Bridges v. California, a 1941 decision overturning the contempt conviction of a labor leader for publishing a telegram from a state official, the Court had itself quoted Madison to the effect that the Revolution specifically intended to replace English common law on freedom of speech and the press, since Magna Carta said nothing about them.

[28] "[I]t is ironic to me," Douglas concluded, "that, in this Nation, many pages must be written and many hours spent to explain why a person who can read whatever he desires ... may not without violating a law carry that literature in his briefcase or bring it home from abroad.

It alluded to his dissent in another of the companion cases, Paris Adult Theatre I v. Slaton, in which he said he no longer believed it was reasonably possible for judges to define obscenity, even narrowly.

In the wake of Miller, that has not had to be revisited, since general obscenity prosecutions declined, technology allowed more discreet methods of obtaining pornography, and the Court has not had to reconsider its standard.

In NLRB v. Electrical Workers, upholding union disciplinary action against members who had worked for a nonunion employer, decided in Scalia's first term, he cited Burger in his concurrence, explaining his textualist approach to jurisprudence, calling it "nowhere more applicable".