ABSTRACT
The Miller test was formulated by the US Supreme Court in Miller v. California, 413 US 15, as a means of evaluating whether written or visual material is obscene. The Miller test was a reaction to the test that had been evolving since 1957 when the Court decided Roth v. United States, 354 US 476, and refined it more in what became known as the Fanny Hill case, officially listed as A Book Named "John Cleland's Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure" v. Attorney General of Massachusetts, 383 US 413. The components of the Miller test hold that the standard for the trier of fact would be if the average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find the work, taken as a whole, appeals to a prurient interest in sex; the material depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by applicable state law; and the material lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.
