Dirty Works: Obscenity on Trial in America’s First Sexual Revolution

NYU media studies professor Gary (The Nervous Liberals) details the crusading work of early 20th-century civil liberties lawyer Morris L. Ernst (1888–1975) in this meticulous history. Born to Jewish immigrants in Alabama and raised in New York City, Ernst was a self-described “exhibitionist” with a wide altruistic streak who cofounded one of New York’s top Jewish law firms and served as co–general counsel of the ACLU. Though Gary notes that Ernst’s legacy was complicated by his “ardent anticommunism” and “dubious alliance” with FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, the focus here is on Ernst’s involvement in “a series of censorship cases that transformed obscenity jurisprudence.” These include defenses in 1929 of birth control activist Mary Ware Dennett against obscenity charges for mailing a sex education pamphlet, the Kinsey Institute in the 1950s for receiving imported erotica for research purposes, and Random House for planning to publish James Joyce’s Ulysses in the 1930s (the case “where the courts caught up with the culture”). Giving a blow-by-blow account of each case, Gary delves deep into legal arguments about public harm versus public value, free speech, and the definition of obscenity, and persuasively argues that in “defending the first sexual revolution,” Ernst helped “pav[e] the way for the second.” Readers will appreciate the thoroughness and accessibility of this deeply researched account. (Aug.)