What did Justice Potter Stewart mean by saying that he knew obscenity when he saw it?

In his concurring opinion for the U.S. Supreme Court case *Jacobellis v. Ohio* (1964), Associate Justice Potter Stewart famously wrote, "I know it when I see it," regarding the definition of obscenity.

This statement reflected the significant difficulty the Supreme Court faced in establishing a precise, objective legal standard for identifying obscene material. At the time, the Court was struggling to move beyond outdated definitions while attempting to protect individual freedoms under the First Amendment. By using this phrase, Justice Stewart was acknowledging that while he could not formulate a comprehensive or universally applicable definition of obscenity, he possessed an intuitive ability to recognize it when presented with specific evidence in a case.12

This judicial challenge eventually led the Court to develop more structured frameworks, such as the three-part test established in *Miller v. California* (1973), which sought to ground the determination of obscenity in "contemporary community standards" rather than relying solely on individual judicial intuition.13