Quantity of Copies of Books v. Kansas/Concurrence Potter Stewart

MR. JUSTICE STEWART, concurring in the judgment.

If this case involved hard core pornography, I think the procedures which were followed would be constitutionally valid, at least with respect to the material which the judge "scrutinized." This case is not like Marcus v. Search Warrant, 367 U. S. 717, where, as the Court notes,

""the warrant gave the police virtually unlimited authority to seize any publications which they considered to be obscene, and was issued on a verified complaint lacking any specific description of the publications to be seized, and without prior submission of any publications whatever to the judge issuing the warrant,""

p., supra. But the books here involved were not hard core pornography. Therefore, I think Kansas could not by any procedure constitutionally suppress them, any more than

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Kansas could constitutionally make their sale or distribution a criminal act. See Jacobellis v. Ohio, ante, p. (STEWART, J., concurring).