How did Roth v. United States define obscenity in 1957?

In the 1957 case Roth v. United States, the U.S. Supreme Court established a new legal standard for defining obscenity, moving away from the older, restrictive Hicklin test.

The Court held that material is obscene if, to the average person applying contemporary community standards, the dominant theme of the work taken as a whole appeals to prurient interest.1

This definition was a significant development in 20th-century legal concepts of obscenity, as it shifted the focus from isolated passages to the work's overall effect and emphasized the perspective of the average person rather than the most susceptible members of society. While the Court later refined this approach—most notably in the three-part test established in Miller v. California (1973)—the Roth decision remains a foundational moment in the history of American freedom of speech jurisprudence.1