Hannegan v. Esquire
| Decision Date | 04 February 1946 |
| Docket Number | No. 399,399 |
| Parties | HANNEGAN, Postmaster General, v. ESQUIRE, Inc |
| Court | U.S. Supreme Court |
Mr.Marvin C. Taylor, of Washington, D.C., for petitioner.
Mr. Bruce Bromley, of New York City, for respondent.
Congress has made obscene material nonmailable, 35 Stat. 1129, 18 U.S.C. § 334, 18 U.S.C.A. § 334, and has applied criminal sanctions for the enforcement of that policy. It has divided mailable matter into four classes, periodical publications constituting the second-class.1 § 7 of the Classification Act of 1879, 20 Stat. 358, 43 Stat. 1067, 39 U.S.C. § 221, 39 U.S.C.A. § 221. And it has specified four conditions upon which a publication shall be admitted to the second-class. § 14 of the Classification Act of 1879, 20 Stat. 358, 48 Stat. 928, 39 U.S.C. § 226, 39 U.S.C.A. § 226. The Fourth condition, which is the only one relevant here,2 provides:
Respondent is the publisher of Esquire Magazine, a monthly periodical which was granted a second-class permit in 1933. In 1943, pursuant to the Act of March 3, 1901, 31 Stat. 1107, 39 U.S.C. § 232, 39 U.S.C.A. § 232, a citation was issued to respondent by the then Postmaster General (for whom the present Postmaster General has now been substituted as petitioner) to show cause why that permit should not be suspended or revoked.3 A hearing was held before a board designated by the then Postmaster General.4 The board recommended that the permit not be revoked. Petitioner's predecessor took a different view. He did not find that Esquire Magazine contained obscene material and therefore was nonmailable. He revoked its second-class permit because he found that it did not comply with the Fourth condition. The gist of his holding is contained in the following excerpt from his opinion:
'The plain language of this statute does not assume that a publication must in fact be 'obscene' within the intendment of the postal obscenity statutes before it can be found not to be 'originated and published for the dissemination of information of a public character, or devoted to literature, the sciences, arts, or some special industry.'
'Writings and pictures may be indecent, vulgar, and risque and still not be obscene in a technical sense. Such writings and pictures may be in that obscure and treacherous borderland zone where the average person hesitates to find them technically obscene, but still may see ample proof that they are morally improper and not for the public welfare and the public good. When such writings or pictures occur in isolated instances their dangerous tendencies and malignant qualities may be considered of lesser importance.
'When, however, they become a dominant and systematic feature they most certainly cannot be said to be for the public good, and a publication which uses them in that manner is not making the 'special con- tribution to the public welfare' which Congress intended by the Fourth condition.
Respondent thereupon sued in the District Court for the District of Columbia to enjoin the revocation order. The parties stipulated at a pre-trial conference that the suit would not be defended on the ground that Esquire Magazine was obscene or was for any other reason nonmailable.5 The District Court denied the injunction and dismissed the complaint. 55 F.Supp. 1015. The Court of Appeals reversed. 151 F.2d 49. The case is here on a petition for a writ of certiorari which we granted because of the importance of the problem in the administration of the postal laws.
The issues of Esquire Magazine under attack are those for January to November inclusive of 1943. The material complained of embraces in bulk only a small percentage of those issues.6 Regular features of the magazine (called 'The Magazine for Men') include articles on topics of current interest, short stories, sports articles or stories, short articles by men prominent in various fields of activities, articles about men prominent in the news, a book review department headed by the late William Lyon Phelps, a theatrical department headed by George Jean Nathan, a department on the lively arts by Gilbert Seldes, a department devoted to men's clothing, and pictorial features, including war action paintings, color photographs of dogs and water colors or etchings of game birds and reproductions of famous paintings, prints and drawings. There was very little in these features which was challenged. But petitioner's predecessor found that the objectionable items, though a small percentage of the total bulk, were regular recurrent features which gave the magazine its dominant tone or characteristic. These include jokes, cartoons, pictures, articles, and poems. They were said to reflect the smoking-room type of humor, featuring, in the main, sex. Some witnesses found the challenged items highly objectionable, calling them salacious and indecent. Others thought they were only racy and risque. Some condemned them as being merely in poor taste. Other witnesses could find no objection to them.
An examination of the items makes plain, we think, that the controversy is not whether the magazine publishes 'information of a public character' or is devoted to 'literature' or to the 'arts.' It is whether the contents are 'good' or 'bad.' To uphold the order of revocation would, therefore, grant the Postmaster General a power of censorship. Such a power is so abhorrent to our traditions that a purpose to grant it should not be easily inferred.
The second-class privilege is a form of subsidy.7 From the beginning Congress has allowed special rates to certain classes of publications. The Act of February 20, 1792, 1 Stat. 232, 238, granted newspapers a more favorable rate. These were extended to magazines and pamphlets by the Act of May 8, 1794, 1 Stat. 354, 362. Prior to the Classification Act of 1879, periodicals were put into the second-class,8 which by the Act of March 3, 1863, 12 Stat 701, 705, included 'all mailable matter exclusively in print, and regularly issued at stated periods, without addition by writing, mark, or sign.' That Act plainly adopted a strictly objective test and left no discretion to the postal authorities to withhold the second-class privilege from a mailable newspaper or periodical because it failed to meet some standard of worth or value or propriety. There is nothing in the language or history of the Classification Act of 1879 which suggests that Congress in that law made any basic change in its treatment of second-class mail, let alone such an abrupt and radical change as would be entailed by the inauguration of even a limited form of censorship.
The postal laws make a clear-cut division between mailable and nonmailable material. The four classes of mailable matter are generally described by objective standards which refer in part to their contents, but not to the quality of their contents.9 The more particular descriptions of the first, 10 third,11 and fourth12 classes follow the same pattern, as do the first three conditions specified for second-class matter.13 If, therefore, the Fourth condition is read in the context of the postal laws of which it is an integral part, it, too, must be taken to supply standards which relate to the format of the publication and to the nature of its contents, but not to their quality, worth, or value. In that view, 'literature' or the 'arts' mean no more than productions which convey ideas by words, pictures, or drawings.
If the Fourth condition is read in that way, it is plain that Congress made no radical or basic change in the type of regulation which it adopted for second-class mail in 1879. The inauguration of even a limited type of censorship would have been such a startling change as to have left some traces in the legislative history. But we find none. Congressman Money, a member of the Postal Committee who defended the bill on the floor of the House, stated that it was 8 Cong.Rec. 2134. The bill contained registration provisions which were opposed on the ground that they might be the inception of a censorship of the press. Id., p. 2137. These were deleted. Id., pp. 2137, 2138. It is difficult to imagine that the Congress, having deleted them for fear of censorship, gave the Postmaster General by the Fourth condition discretion to deny periodicals the second-class rate, if in his view they did not contribute to the public good. Congressman Money indeed referred to 'the daily newspapers, with their load of gossip and scandal and every-day topics that are floating through the press' as being entitled without question to the second-class privilege. Id., p. 2135. To the charge that the bill imposed a censorship, he pointed out that it only withheld the privileged rate from publications 'made up simply of advertising concerns not intended for public education'; and added:
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